Breeding for Bio-ethanol Production in Lolium perenne L.: Association of Allelic Variation with High Water-Soluble Carbohydrate Content.

Increasing the extractable sugar yield from perennial crops is one strategy to generate renewable fuels such as bio-ethanol. Lolium perenne L. (perennial ryegrass) can contain significant (>30% dry matter) water-soluble sugars in the form of polymeric fructan which is readily extracted, broken down and fermented to bio-ethanol. A population of L. perenne generated from four parents which differed in water-soluble carbohydrate (WSC) content was subjected to multiple rounds of selection and recombination on the basis of early spring WSC content to produce a high WSC, and a low WSC population. A control population was generated by selecting the same number of plants at random. The alleles present at six candidate gene loci were analysed before and after selection and correlated to WSC content. Significant differences in the allele frequency of L. perenne soluble-acid invertase1:4 were observed between the three populations with one haplotype significantly associated with the high WSC C2S+ population (after three rounds of selection and two rounds of recombination). Moreover, WSC content was also associated with biomass accumulation. Thus, in addition to a 2.84-fold increase in WSC yield, the C2S+ population also had 1.48-fold more biomass per plant, resulting in 3.9-fold higher WSC yield per plant than the control population.