Michel Renard

Genetic and molecular approaches to improve nutritional value of Brassica napus L. seed

Oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.) is a major oil crop that also supplies proteins for the feed industry. In order to reduce total cost production, the objective is to increase oil yield while reducing crop inputs (especially nitrogen and pesticides). Concomitantly, it is necessary to anticipate specific uses (e.g., fatty acid composition) and to ensure the valorisation of the by-products (rapeseed meal). By the past, improvement of seed quality focused on fatty acid balance and low seed glucosinolate content. Current goals include the breeding of yellow-seeded rapeseed lines with high content of seed oil. The use of molecular tools and the exploitation of Arabidopsis knowledge will be presented and discussed.

Distribution of sinapine and related compounds in seeds of Brassica and allied genera

Abstract Total contents of aromatic choline esters and sinapine have been investigated in seeds of cruciferous species belonging to Arabis , Brassica , Cakile , Diplotaxs , Eruca , Hesperis , Matthiola , Raphanobrassica , Raphanus and Sinapis . Choline esters such as sinapine, isoferuloylcholine, feruloylcholine, hesperaline and 4-hydroxybenzoylcholine, have been found in many of the plants under study. Qualitative and quantitative distribution patterns of these compounds are genus-characteristic. This suggests them to be a useful tool in the chemotaxonomy of Crucifereae. In spite of their genus-specific distribution pattern, the capacity of plants to accumulate and store phenolic choline esters in seeds is highly variable within the genus Brassica . Besides a genetic control, the aromatic choline esters content is also influenced by environmental conditions. Brassica species with high and low chromosome numbers were compared according to their qualitative and quantitative aromatic choline ester content. Genomic divergence or affinity among the species under study are discussed.

A Detailed Survey of Seed Coat Flavonoids in Developing Seeds of Brassica napus L.

Proanthocyanidins (PAs) are seed coat flavonoids that impair the digestibility of Brassica napus meal. Development of low-PA lines is associated with a high-quality meal and with increased contents in oil and proteins, but requires better knowledge of seed flavonoids. Flavonoids in Brassica mature seed are mostly insoluble so that very few qualitative and quantitative data are available yet. In the present study, the profiling of seed coat flavonoids was established in eight black-seeded B. napus genotypes, during seed development when soluble flavonoids were present and predominated over the insoluble forms. Thirteen different flavonoids including (-)-epicatechin, five procyanidins (PCs which are PAs composed of epicatechin oligomers only) and seven flavonols (quercetin-3-O-glucoside, quercetin-dihexoside, isorhamnetin-3-O-glucoside, isorhamnetin-hexoside-sulfate, isorhamnetin-dihexoside, isorhamnetin-sinapoyl-trihexoside and kaempferol-sinapoyl-trihexoside) were identified and quantified using liquid chromatography coupled to electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS(n)). These flavonol derivatives were characterized for the first time in the seed coat of B. napus, and isorhamnetin-hexoside-sulfate and isorhamnetin-sinapoyl-trihexoside were newly identified in Brassica spp. High amounts of PCs accumulated in the seed coat, with solvent-soluble polymers of (-)-epicatechin reaching up to 10% of the seed coat weight during seed maturation. In addition, variability for both PC and flavonol contents was observed within the panel of eight black-seeded genotypes. Our results provide new insights into breeding for low-PC B. napus genotypes.

The promoter of the Arabidopsis thaliana BAN gene is active in proanthocyanidin-accumulating cells of the Brassica napus seed coat

As part of an ongoing research program dedicated to the understanding of proanthocyanidin (PA) accumulation in Brassica napus seed coat, transgenic rapeseed plants carrying a 2.3-kb fragment of the Arabidopsis thaliana BAN promoter (ProAtBAN) fused to the uidA reporter gene (GUS) were generated. Analysis of these plants revealed that ProAtBAN was activated in B. napus seed coat, following a spatio-temporal pattern that was very similar to the PA deposition profile in rapeseed and also to the one previously described in Arabidopsis. ProAtBAN activity occurred as soon as the early stages of embryogenesis and was restricted to the cells where PAs were shown to accumulate. Therefore, the Arabidopsis BAN promoter can be used to trigger gene expression in B. napus seed coat for both genetic engineering and functional validation of candidate genes. In addition, these data strongly suggest that the transcriptional regulatory network of the BAN gene is conserved between Arabidopsis and rapeseed. This is consistent with the fact that similarity searches of the public rapeseed sequence databases allowed recovering the rapeseed homologs for several BAN regulators, namely TT1, TT2, TT8, TT16 and TTG1, which have been previously described in Arabidopsis.