b"Big Steps Towards Plant Breedings Holy Grail: ApomixisWhile apomixis has been pursued by plant breeders for decades, it has until now been far out of reach. Several major research breakthroughs recently, however, mean apomixis is much closer than ever to reality.Madeleine BaergIN NATURE,some 400 plant species are able to reproduce clonally: the eggs inside the flowers of dandelions, saska-toons and oranges, for example, are able to become clonal eggs without pollination, stably transferring genes between genera-tions from mother to daughter. Harnessing this apomictic pro-cess has the potential to dramatically transform plant breeding and drastically speed up hybrid propagation. Plant research company, KeyGene, based in the Netherlands, is at the forefront of pursuing apomixis and has been the home of several major apomixis breakthroughs in the last handful of years. Rik Op den Camp, a program scientist and research team leader at KeyGene, says apomixis would be a game-changing technology for plant breeders. The wording Holy Grail is used by some people about apo-mixis. It would be very, very impactful, he says. Most obviously, access to apomixis would speed the breeding process up, allowing researchers to move much more quickly to very large field trials in multiple locations thanks to cloned seedMary Gehring, a molecular biologist at the Whitehead Institute at propagation.Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).Perhaps most importantly, apomixis would allow breeders to capture and maintain hybrid vigor.If you can fix heterosis after a single cross and then the seed production will only yield those fixed heterotic plants, that's going to be quite an impactful change and its going to have a major impact on the way breeding is done, Op den Camp says. Apomixis could also open up the benefits of hybrid vigor to many more species, says Mary Gehring, a molecular biologist at the Whitehead Institute at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).Hybrid vigor is very important for maize. That was devel-oped because its really easy to pollinate maize. But for other crops species like soybean, for examplewhich could benefit from hybrid vigor, theres not an easy way to create hybrids because of the structure of the flower or the genetics, he says. Apomixis could open up the benefits of hybrid vigor to many more species because youd only have to create a hybrid onceRik Op den Camp, a program scientist and research team leader at and then you could perpetuate it. KeyGene.84/ SEEDWORLD.COMDECEMBER 2023"