In the next decades, grasslands as important ecosystems and basis of dairy and meat production are likely to experience damages and subsequent production losses due to changing climate. Recent events (e.g. severe drought in Western Europe in 2003) highlighted an insufficient capacity in local populations of grassland species to cope with unusual climatic events. However, most grassland species show a large ecotypic diversity over wide environmental ranges.
GrassLandscape aims to detect genomic markers of climatic adaptation in the natural diversity of perennial ryegrass using methodological tools from the landscape genomics conceptual frame. Results are used to set up strategies (assisted migration, breeding) for a regional adaptation of the diversity of this grassland species to the foreseen climate change throughout Europe.
The objectives of GrassLandscape are to:
- Use association models between genomic polymorphisms and environmental variations to map the spatial distribution of genomic markers linked to adaptive diversity in present climatic conditions and to foresee possible shifts in the spatial range fitting these markers in the context of several climate change scenarios.
- Define allelic profiles of perennial ryegrass expected to provide climatic adaptation at regional scale over Europe under the future climatic conditions.
- Propose strategies to combine climatic adaptation and value for services by genetic recombination.
- Implementation of an innovative protocol (sequencing of pooled DNAs from individuals of a same population) that delivered allele frequencies for 330 000 SNP loci in 469 natural populations of perennial ryegrass sampled all across Europe.
- The first near exhaustive reconstruction of the phylogeography and history of expansion of perennial ryegrass in its natural area of presence.
- A near exhaustive assessment of the natural phenotypic variability of perennial ryegrass and the clarification of strategies of climate adaptation in a grass species using the functional ecology framework.
- The conception of the first method that combines environment, phenotype and genotype data in a single genetic analysis to identify adaptive loci.
- Guidelines to use high throughput genotyping for improving the sampling and conservation of natural genetic resources of grassland species. Other guidelines to use these genetic resources for the adaptation of grassland species to climate change. More specifically, identification of promising natural strains of perennial ryegrass for the regional adaptation of this species to climate change across Europe.