Methods for Inducing Sexual or Apomictic Reproduction

Benefit

Since the days of the Egyptian Pharaohs, people have known that inbreeding decreases vitality. However, today's crop breeding practices - including those used to develop hybrids -rely on long-term episodes of repeated inbreeding and single seed descent (which often takes 8-10 years) to achieve crop uniformity. For sexual crops, plant-to-plant uniformity is achieved in no other way. Today, yields are limited to what can be achieved by a single highly inbred genotype for inbred crops or by two (sometimes four) highly inbred genotypes for hybrid crops. Hybridization studies prove that inbred crops yield far below their genetic yield potentials and unfortunately, it currently remains economically impossible to produce commercial quantities of hybrid seed for inbred varietal crops.

Because there are many thousands of plant and animal species that can reproduce both sexually and asexually, the inventors hypothesized that the capacity to switch between sexual and asexual reproduction remains imbedded in their genomes but has mostly been silenced. Through gene expression profiling experiments and pharmacological studies, metabolic and molecular regulators that reactivate sexual/asexual switching have been identified and procedures have been developed to switch sexually reproducing plants to reproduce asexually and asexually reproducing plants to reproduce sexually (Mateo de Arias et al., 2020; patent pending).

The use of this technology has already been proven successful in inducing apomeiosis (the first step of asexual seed formation) in multiple sexual plants, including maize, soybean and cowpea, through carefully timed pharmacological treatments applied laboriously in laboratory settings. The inventors suspect that the high penetrance needed for commercial seed production coupled with mechanisms to induce sexual seed formation for breeding will require genetic engineering. These transformation studies are underway.

This technology will remove uniformity-by-inbreeding requirements, thus enabling breeders to achieve full hybrid superiority for major world crops (without inbreeding constraints). Thus, it will allow seed companies to produce commercial quantities of seeds of their new, uniquely superior hybrid creations at much lower costs. Sexual crops could be engineered to reproduce asexually for uniform clonal seed production except when chemically induced to reproduce sexually for genetic recombination and selection purposes. The expected yield improvements worldwide are great enough to enhance global food security.

Market Application

This technology can be adapted one crop at a time and is most ideal for use in adapting the major world crops (corn, wheat, rice, soybean, cotton, etc.) to achieve crop uniformity and increase yield and vitality. Once fully implemented, this technology has the potential of revolutionizing food, feed, fiber, and timber production globally.