Improving canola heat tolerance - a coordinated multidisciplinary approach

Extended period of high temperature stress and short periods of heat shock are major threat to canola grain and oil yield in canola growing regions in Australia. This project looks specifically at the genetics of heat tolerance in canola and will build on the outputs of previous GRDC research. Selected germplasm from preliminary screening in controlled-environment rooms will be validated for heat tolerance in the field, using portable heat chambers and in irrigated field trials across the canola growing regions of Australia. Given the lack of genetic variation for heat tolerance in the Australian cultivated canola gene pool, this investment will also focus on exploiting potential new genetic variability for tolerance to high-temperature within the large number of Brassica napus lines recently resynthesised from ancestral species as well as landraces from China.