Agricultural Biotechnology

The agricultural biotechnology focus area has two primary sets of programs:  one on animals, primarily dairy cattle, and one on plants, particularly soybeans and peaches.

Animal programs: Mammary development is critical to profitability in dairy, beef, swine and lamb operations because milk production controls growth of offspring and profitability in dairy operations.  Research will increase knowledge about a specific population of cells in the mammary gland that is likely critical in controlling mammary development.  There is the potential to improve profitability for dairy and beef producers. There may also be important corollaries for human medicine if the apparently genetic basis for resistance to mammary adenoma in ruminants can be understood.

Plant programs:  Legumes are unique among crop plants in that they can grow in the absence of soil nitrogen. While such growth is dependent on the presence of compatible species of certain bacteria in the soil, the environment that is set up between the plant and the bacterium allows legumes to exploit niches where other plants cannot grow. It makes legumes particularly useful for agriculture. The ability of these plants to utilize nitrogen fixed from the atmosphere by the bacteria living within specialized root structures (nodules) makes legumes ideally suited to soils where nitrogen is limited.  Fifteen percent of the world's arable land is planted with legumes and they provide 33 percent of humankind's nutritional nitrogen needs. Because so much of the world's food supply relies on legumes, the outcomes of legume research can have broad implications. The research program on legumes has potential impact in agricultural biotechnology by broadening the knowledge base, especially with regard to genes involved in root structures.  A major concern in South Carolina being addressed in a research program is the soybean cyst nematode, which is a devastating pest of soybeans. Resistance to many of today’s soybean pests has been found in primitive germplasm.  Research programs will examine the genome of the primitive germplasm with broad resistance to soybean cyst nematode to identify how the plant deals swiftly with stress.  It is anticipated that it will make it possible to devise more lasting protection against the nematode in modern cultivars through genetic engineering. There is also a program underway to determine the inheritance of genetic traits that may be utilized in the breeding program to increase yield and/or quality of soybeans. Commercial peach growers in South Carolina and the Southeast United States suffer significant production losses due to fungal diseases, in particular Armillaria root rot and brown rot disease.  A research program is in place to address these two key disease problems and search for management options that are effective, affordable and easy to implement. Clemson hosts the world’s leading laboratory for fruit tree genomics and has researchers focusing on genes that control peach bud dormancy.  Findings from this research may extend the growing season and lead to an understanding of the dormancy process in temperate deciduous trees. Another research program is investigating spider silk to understand the molecular structure of the world’s strongest fiber and find ways to mass-produce this substance. In the area of human health, faculty are developing new weapons to combat disease, illness and aging to change the quality of our lives. The process of DNA repair is being studied at the molecular and cellular level in an attempt to understand how the repair mechanism works in response to disease. This research may lead to novel approaches in the prevention and treatment of cancer.

Page maintained by: Gary McMahan, gmcmhn@clemson.edu