Experience story of the project “Improving adaptability and resilience of perennial ryegrass for safe and sustainable food systems through CRISPR-Cas9 technology – EditGrass4Food”
Nowadays increasingly unpredictable climatic conditions cause difficulties for perennial grassland species, such as perennial ryegrass, which are essential for pasture and grassland.
The EditGrass4Food project was created to address the challenges posed by climate change in agriculture. It offered an innovative solution, using CRISPR-Cas9 technology to improve the adaptation of perennial ryegrass to drought and frost, with potential to enable safer and more sustainable food systems.
Climate change is one of the factors that can have a negative impact on agriculture and food security. The European Green deal and farm to Fork (F2F) Strategy envisage that biotechnology will play an important role in ensuring food security and help ensure the sustainable development of the EU economy. Grassland plays a key role in both human population recreation and farm animal feed. The perennial ryegrass is an important plant in pasture and grassland, but it often lacks the resilience to climatic conditions in northern Europe and the Baltics, which are becoming increasingly unpredictable as a result of climate change.
The last winter season of 2023-2024 also showed that the usual blanket of snow could completely disappear, the soil could thaw, but it could be followed by frost. Such conditions have a significant impact on perennial grassland and reduce its productivity. The EditGrass4Food project brings together leading scientists from the Baltic States and Norway to find a complex solution to the problem of abiotic stress as a result of climate change, using an important grassland crop, the perennial ryegrass, as a model.
Project activities and results
The results of the project will have an impact on the productivity of pasture grassland in the Baltic States and Norway, as well as a wider impact on the resilience of different agricultural crops under climate change. The main goal of the project was to characterize the abiotic stress endurance of the perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) different genotypes, to assess their genetic basis by studying changes in gene expression, as well as to make changes in abiotic stress endurance by editing certain genes with the CRISPR/Cas9 system.
The project’s research describes the resistance of more than 300 perennial ryegrass genotypes to drought and low temperature stress. Work continues to characterize changes in gene expression under drought and low temperature stress conditions across the various genotypes of the perennial ryegrass. At the same time, experiments are being carried out to characterise genetic diversity in abiotic stress tolerance genes, which will in future be able to be used as markers in the selection of perennial ryegrass. Agrobacterium’s genetic transformation system has also been developed, allowing plants with the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing module in the genome to be efficiently developed, allowing genomically edited plants with specific gene inactivation to be obtained. At this stage of the development of the project, studies allow the function of individual genes to be determined and develop understanding of mechanisms for resistance to abiotic stress in plants, but with the development of EU legislation in the field of GMOs and genomically edited plants, potentially transformed genotypes could be used in grass selection.
Information on the possibilities to change the abiotic stress endurance of forage crops has been collected during the project (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2023.1127532/full). At the final stage of the project, work is underway on a number of manuscripts that gather information on changes in gene expression under the influence of abiotic stress, optimisation of protoplast culture methods for perennial ryegrass and improvement of genome editing methods.
Cooperation between project partners and project sustainability
The project involves partners from the Baltic States and Norway who had not co-operated extensively until now. Intensive communication between partners made it possible to match expectations with capabilities and set feasible project objectives. The COVID-19 pandemic limited the possibility for project partners to meet face-to-face, while Russia’s invasion in Ukraine created additional stress and increased project costs. At the same time, these challenges created additional opportunities in the area of communication. It should be noted that the Baltic Research Programme provided an opportunity to financially support an Ukrainian scientist, which enabled the project to involve a specialist with significant experience in plant genetic transformation.
In the short term, the benefits of the project will give us knowledge of the regulation of abiotic stress endurance in plants. The experience and knowledge gained will be disseminated in the form of scientific publications. In the long term, the project results will provide forage and grassland plant breeders with useful information on genotypes with better abiotic stress endurance, as well as specific target genes involved in these processes. The use of genomically edited plants in breeding is subject to the adoption of the European Commission’s proposal in the field of New Genomic Techniques. If this proposal is approved by the European Parliament and the Council, it is possible that plant material from the project may be useful for practical breeding.
Different solutions are being sought to ensure the sustainability of the project. It should be noted that legislation on genomically edited organisms is still pending in EU, but the 2018 decision of the European Court of Justice concluded that plants obtained by the new methods of mutagenesis are GMOs, which consequently restrict their use in plant breeding and agriculture. At this point, a plan has been developed to continue cooperation between the project partners to ensure completion of the remaining experimental part of the project and the preparation of publications. It is planned to use the NordPluss programme for such meeting activities, in which the project application was recently submitted.
The Baltic Research Programme is implemented with the support of EEA grants within the framework of programme “Research and Education”, which is implemented by the Ministry of Education and Science and the Latvian Council of Science. The total funding of the programme is 8,676,084 euros, of which the state budget co-financing is 15% or 1,301,413 euros and the EEA co-financing is 85% or 7,374,671 euros. In the Baltic research programme, 9 research projects and 5 small cooperation projects are implemented in Latvia.
The Baltic Research Programme’s project “Improving adaptability and resilience of perennial ryegrass for safe and sustainable food systems through CRISPR-Cas9 technology – EditGrass4Food” is implemented by the University of Latvia (Latvia), Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Norway), Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry (Lithuania), Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia).
Subscribe to news
Receive notifications of the latest contests, news and news events in programs that are important to you!
Report Irregularities
Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway have a zero-tolerance policy on corruption and mismanagement in the EEA and Norway Grants. We strongly encourage you to share your concerns and report suspected irregularities.
