CO-FUNDED BY THE FONDS QUÉBÉCOIS DE LA RECHERCHE SUR LA NATURE ET LE LES TECHNOLOGIES (FRQNT)
Sometimes referred to as the “Queen of Forages”, Alfalfa is the primary source of fodder for dairy and butchery farmers in Québec. It offers excellent agronomic performance in addition to being drought resistant and carbon sequestering. Despite all these qualities, alfalfa is finicky in terms of environmental conditions and agronomic practices to reach its full potential. One of the success factors of alfalfa is the development of nodules that capture nitrogen from the air to feed the plant. These nodules are developed in symbiosis with Rhizobia, a bacteria fixing nitrogen from the air. The sustainability and optimal performance of alfalfa relies on soil health, the persistence of Rhizobia, and the functional balance of beneficial vs. harmful microorganisms in the alfalfa soil microbiome.
Currently, Québec producers have no tool to determine the balance of beneficial vs. harmful microorganisms in the microbiome and to integrate these genomic indicators with available soil health indicators to calculate alfalfa performance indices and alfalfa health indices. and soils cultivated under various management and agronomic practices.
The goal of the project is to apply an integrative microbiome genomics approach to develop a tool for Québec producers that helps them determine the impact of agronomic management and practices and soil health on productivity, quality and the persistence of alfalfa to increase their competitiveness and optimize their management of more sustainable alfalfa. The specific objectives of this project are to:
1) develop innovative genomic indicators of the persistence of Rhizobium, alfalfa and soils
2) demonstrate the link between these indicators and the indices of performance, quality and persistence of alfalfa resulting from the development of machine learning models
3) Determine the impact of various management and agronomic practices on these indicators and the performance, quality and persistence indexes of alfalfa and thus provide better diagnostic decision-making tools to Québec producers to enable more efficient agriculture. sustainable
Genome Centre: Génome Québec
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