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Partners

- Institut Jean-Pierre Bourgin (IJPB) (Herman Höfte, Raphael Mercier, Oumaya Bouchabke)
- Agroimpact Estrées-Mons (Maryse Brancourt) 

Abstract of the project

The perennial C4 grass Miscanthus is, with its very low environmental footprint, expected to play a major role in the future supply of biomass for energy, chemicals and materials. Besides the clear advantages of this perennial grass for biomass production (high yield, deficient recycling of nutrients, low water content, etc.), Miscanthus has not yet undergone domestication. Main targets for crop improvement are increasing diversity, adapting flowering time to local conditions, improving biomass composition for industrial uses, but, most importantly, overcoming the main agronomic bottlenecks, which are the inefficient vegetative propagation of the sterile interspecific hybrid M x giganteus, which is the only cultivated variety and the potential invasiveness of other seed-propagated varieties The project “Biomass For the Future”, coordinated by a SPS scientist, is in part focused on the domestication of this essentially wild species using marker-assisted selection and comparative genomics with the closely related species sorghum and maize. The advent of the CRISPR/Cas9 technology now creates a unique opportunity to accelerate this process by directly targeting “domestication genes” using knowledge from other crops and model species. MISEDIT will develop CRISPR/Cas9 in miscanthus and focuses on improving saccharification efficiency by reducing lignin content (by targeting lignin biosynthetic genes) and the use of the proprietary “Mitosis replaces Meiosis (MiMe)” technology to generate diplogametes for the creation of seed-propagated triploid germplasm. This should remove the major obstacles for the cultivation of this species including the risk of invasiveness and thus create new commercial opportunities.

Communications in conférences:

Oumaya Bouchabké-Coussa « Régénération et transformation de Miscanthus sinensis », RegenCrop meeting – Dijon, May 2017

Manon Louis « Projet « Misedit », Vers le « gene editing » chez Miscanthus sinensis », “Biomass For the Future” Meeting – Montpellier, February 2019

Oumaya Bouchabké-Coussa « The long way toward gene editing in Miscanthus sinensis », Final “Biomass For the Future” Meeting - Paris, 16/10/2020.