The Mutagenized Oat Population

CropTailor owns a unique mutagenized oat population, derived from the Lantmännen variety Belinda. The population was developed by chemical modification (EMS) of oat seeds. The population consist of ca. 2800 mutagenized lines (so called CT-lines). Molecular analyses showed that ca 1 million unique point mutations (SNPs) were introduced into each line, i.e. ca 3 billion mutations in the whole population (Chawade et al, 2010). This is enough to mutate every single gene in the genome several times. Thus, the mutation frequency in the population is high enough to provide interesting observable phenotypic traits in the lines. At the present time, as the CT-lines has been stabilized over numerus M-generations, we calculate the number of homozygous mutations to be ca. 1.25 billion the entire population. This unique mutant population provides a valuable source for trait discovery. As our oat population is produces by random mutagenesis our CT-lines are not regulated as GMO under the European parliament’s directive 2001/18/EC.

CT-lines which have interesting phenotypic traits and/or genetic mutations have been crossed to other market varieties and CT-lines. This is done, partly, with the aim of stacking mutations for lines with complementary beneficiary properties to create even stronger expressed phenotypic traits and partly with the aim of creating recombinant inbreed line populations for genetic mapping of interesting properties. Through our extensive crossing program we have established a range of pure lines that are currently being tested for variety registration.