Project properties
Title Seed longevity in lettuce
Group Plant Physiology, Laboratory of
Project type thesis
Credits 18
Supervisor(s) Leo Willems and Dr Leonie Bentsink
Examiner(s) Dr. Leonie Bentsink
Contact info leo.willems@wur.nl, leonie.bentsink@wur.nl AND thesis.PPH@wur.nl
Begin date 2021/09/01
End date 2022/09/30
Description Background: Seed storage is essential for the conservation of biodiversity in ecological settings (soil seed bank) as well as in storage facilities for crop production. The latter is extremely relevant for the Dutch plant breeding industry, which is one of the world leaders in vegetable seed export (> 1 billion US dollar per year). The identification of genes or genomic regions that control seed longevity will allow breeding for better storable varieties.
A species that largely suffers from seed longevity issues is Lettuce. In the past Lettuce populations have been investigated for their seed longevity characteristics and quantitative trait loci (QTL) have been mapped. The phenotypic analyses of these populations have all been performed using experimental ageing methods, such as the controlled deterioration (CD) or accelerated ageing storage conditions (i.e. elevated temperature and relative humidity). This is a drawback since we have shown recently that these methods do not very well mimic seed longevity in Arabidopsis. To overcome the need of experimental ageing we have been able to retrieve seeds of a naturally aged Lettuce population. These can now be germinated and used for QTL analyses.

The aim of this thesis project is to identify loci that regulate seed longevity in lettuce.

The project: Seeds of the lettuce population will be germinated and germination parameters will be retrieved in an automated way using the Germinator setup (Joosen et al., 2010).These will then be used for QTL analyses. Outcomes of the analyses will be compared to literature in which seed longevity is analysed using experimental ageing methods (Schwember and Bradford, 2010).

References:
Joosen RV, Kodde J, Willems LA, Ligterink W, van der Plas LH, Hilhorst HW (2010) GERMINATOR: a software package for high-throughput scoring and curve fitting of Arabidopsis seed germination. Plant J 62: 148-159

If you are interested in this project please contact the supervisor via email with a copy to thesis.PPH@wur.nl with:
1. Your motivation for choosing this project
2. For which purpose (BSc or MSc thesis, research practice, etc)
3. Your BSc/MSc program
4. When you would like to start
Please be aware that if you do not provide the required information above it may cause a delay in our reply.

Used skills Phenotypic analyses, QTL analyses
Requirements Basic knowledge of plant physiology and molecular biology and e.g. PPH10806, PPH30306 and PPH30806, and/or other relevant courses in Plant Sciences.