Implementation of NPBT for Dietary Inulin Update

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CHIC is the Chicory Innovation Consortium. The project’s main objectives are 1) to implement New Plant Breeding Techniques (NPBTs) in chicory in order to establish it as a multipurpose crop for the production of health-related products with clear benefits for consumers, and 2) to develop co-innovation pathways with stakeholders for game-changing technologies, such as NPBTs.

The overall objective of Work Package 2 (WP2) is to develop NPBT-based chicory varieties with improved dietary inulin quality.

Specific objectives are:

  • To control and increase the inulin polymer length (increase the mean degree of polymerization, mDP)
  • To increase the yield of inulin
  • To reduce the presence of small sugars and bitter compounds (terpenes that hinder the extraction of inulin

Updates

Inulin is a dietary fiber with health-promoting characteristics mainly targeting gut health and extracted from root chicory, which is used in many food products. The quality and the length of the inulin molecules determine the value and health-beneficial character of this compound. Using NPBTs, researchers want to increase the yield, quality, and length of inulin.

Currently, the natural production of terpenes in chicory makes the inulin extraction method inefficient and costly and one of its goals is to reduce the production of natural chicory terpenes.

Researchers found that they could generate mutant chicory plants in which the genes encoding the inulin break-down enzymes are blocked using NPBT due to the small alterations the CRISPR tools made in the plant DNA. All mutated plants were then analyzed in great detail on DNA level using sequencing methods.

Root cuttings allowed the selected mutants to be multiplied and used for induction experiments of inulin break-down to show the effect of the targeted mutations on inulin quality and profile under autumn/winter conditions. The mutants in which all FEH genes were targeted showed the desired effect on blocking degradation of inulin by FEH enzyme activity under autumn/winter conditions, resulting in high-quality inulin with a low level of small sugars and longer inulin molecules, with an increased mean degree of polymerisation (mDP).

Researchers could also show that mutants of terpene biosynthesis generated in work package 1 in which the Germacrene A Synthase (Gas) genes were targeted are strongly reduced in the synthesis of bitter compounds, or total lack the bitter compounds.

 

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Remember, Today is Earth Day!

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This day is about empowering and expanding the environmental movement. As the health and wellbeing of every human being are closely interlinked with the health of our planet, fighting climate change requires persistent action on many levels. We, at CHIC, are doing our part to contribute to the fight against climate change and the health of our environment. So should you! Let’s work together to give the future generation a clean and healthy future.

There have been several actions and events this year that focus on climate action, reforestation, or protecting biodiversity, as well as actions on food and environment impact reduction, global clean-ups, climate literacy, and citizen science. It is time that we continually restore the earth because we care about the place we live in and for its beauty.

To learn more about Earth Day 2021, click here.

https://www.earthday.org/earth-day-2021/

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Development of Four Conceptually Different NPBTs Update

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CHIC is the Chicory Innovation Consortium. The project’s main objectives are 1) to implement New Plant Breeding Techniques (NPBTs) in chicory in order to establish it as a multipurpose crop for the production of health-related products with clear benefits for consumers, and 2) to develop co-innovation pathways with stakeholders for game-changing technologies, such as NPBTs.

The overall objective of Work Package 1 (WP1) is to develop four different New Plant Breeding Techniques to be used in root chicory. Specific objectives are:

  • To develop stable and transient delivery systems of RGENs in chicory
  • To improve regeneration and transformation efficiencies from transformed tissues and protoplasts
  • To develop DNA-free methods for RGEN delivery into chicory protoplasts
  • To develop and implement novel RGENs
  • To obtain self-compatible chicory genotypes suitable for inbreeding
  • To obtain an improved assembly of the chicory genome

Updates

WP1 is a technical work package, dedicated to the implementation of the new breeding technologies in chicory. New breeding technologies are a rather general term, but in CHIC it means genome editing methods based on CRISPR-Cas. Researchers from CHIC are developing four different methods in parallel for the delivery of CRISPR tools to chicory cells. These methods should have identical genetic outcomes and only differ in the degree of “DNA invasiveness” (this is: how much recombinant DNA technology is used in the process); this is relevant when it comes to the adoption of these new technologies and their products by regulators and the general public. In the first three years of the project, the three identified methods with varying degrees of DNA invasiveness have been fully implemented, and plants have been grown to maturity in which the genes responsible for root bitter compounds have been eliminated by genome editing. A patent application has been filed on this innovation! Meanwhile, other partners within the project continue to work on alternative genome editing molecules (that may work even better in plant cells than CRISPR-Cas) and on a solution for self-incompatibility. This feature is what chicory plants cannot be fertilized by their own pollen, as had been done in many other plant species, which poses a serious bottleneck in chicory variety improvement by plant breeding. The genes for self-incompatibility in chicory have been found and solutions to bypass their activities are being tested now. Finally, additional work has been performed to improve the chicory genome sequence.

Development of Four Conceptually Different NPBTs
The objective of WP1 is to develop four conceptually different methods for genome editing of chicory, methods that differ in their degree of DNA invasiveness…
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