Location: Northwest Irrigation and Soils Research
Project Number: 2054-21220-006-126-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jun 1, 2026
End Date: Aug 31, 2028
Objective:
The objective of this study is to understand the existing genetic variation of frost tolerance among sugar beet and sea beets, its wild progenitor, and to locate an actionable marker or gene that can be used for accelerated breeding or targeted genetic engineering. Improving frost tolerance of sugar beet varieties will enable sugar beet farmers in the US to benefit from increased production and deceased risk of incurring replanting costs due to frost damage.
Approach:
It is beneficial to increase the growing season for sugar beet by planting earlier in the year, however this can increase early season frost injury of newly emerged sugar beet seedlings. Freeze damage can also occur in the sugar beet roots if the soil freezes before harvest. Roots in storage piles are also subject to freezing conditions since they are stored under ambient conditions through the winter months. Therefore, developing sugar beet cultivars that have enhanced freeze/frost tolerance could greatly improve sugar beet yields by extending the growing season and preventing loss during storage. There are a great diversity of sea beet lines in the USDA-ARS Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN), that represent a wealth of genetic diversity adapted to highly variable regions of Eurasia. Evaluating and genotyping these lines in simple growth chamber experiments can provide a genetic source for frost tolerance and a possible marker for targeted introgression.
The experiments will include frost tolerance assays on seedlings and plants from many different beet lines sourced from the GRIN repository. The main trait to be evaluated will be seedling survival after frost condition exposure, however secondary phenotypes may be collected such as leaf chlorophyll content, leaf surface temperature, electrolyte leakage, leaf relative water content, and turgidity loss. Routine genotyping via whole genome sequencing or the recently developed 4k SNP panel will be done in order to generate genetic data necessary for marker-trait associations. Follow-up experiments such as RNA sequencing for gene expression analysis or genome assembly for gene content variation will be performed if suitable candidates present themselves.