Heru Rusfiandi

Profile

Project Title: Chromosome identification and behaviour in meiosis in Oil Palm (Elaeis guineensis)

Summary: The project aims to develop a high-resolution karyotype of oil palm (Elaeis guineensis), a species native to Africa, using existing and new chromosome markers that will be developed and mapped using fluorescence in situ hybridisation. In that haploids will be exploited, which have a single set of 16 chromosomes and provide ideal material for karyotyping, because quality chromosome spreads are easier to prepare than from diploids and chromosome identities are less easily confused.

Once the oil palm karyotype is established it can be used to assess candidate doubled haploids, which occur at a low frequency naturally. The work will help develop highly homozygous lines for breeding oil palm varieties.  Indeed, understanding the biological mechanisms involved in the generation of stable double haploids will lead to greater efficiencies in character exploitation and advance Verdant’s lead in F1 Hybrid production. 

Using flow cytometry, it is known that putative doubled haploids have about twice the DNA content as haploids, but the integrity of their karyotypes is unknown and needs to be confirmed. For example, the material may have translocations or be aneuploid given variation in estimated genome sizes of the source material. A key project aim is to establish an aneuploid collection, which if successful will be a valuable resource in genetic studies and breeding of oil palm.

The programme will also explore the karyotypes of inter-specific hybrids between E. oleifera and E. guineensis and of backcross material with E. guineensis with the aim of finding material with introgressed E. oleifera chromosome segments. It will explore chromosome behaviour at meiosis to determine why many of these backcrossing schemes fail due to chromosome loss. 

Supervisor:

• Prof Andrew Leitch

Research