Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

June 27, 2012 Cotton Incorporated, Cary, NC
1:30 to 3:00pm

Ted Wallace (chair) began the meeting by recognizing official members: State Reports State Reports Alabama (Weaver)

A.    Nematode research remains a focus area where known sources of resistance are being incorporated
B.    Evaluation on agronomic effects of nematode gene use
C.    Sources being used: mostly lonren and GB713
D.    Working on heat tolerance as well. F2:3 progeny in 2012 field trials

Arkansas (Bourland)

A.    Fred commented that the formal participant to the project, Dr. Mac Stewart, passed away in March, 2012
B.    Recovery of Macs material is underway as best as possible
     1)    Much of the material seems to be open pollinated
     2)    Field notebooks proving hard to decipher. James Fralichowski is trying to assist (J. Zhang has experience in the program and will aid as needed).
     3)    Hope is to salvage the work on sterility restorer systems and phenotypic mutants

Georgia (Chee)

A.    Continues work on root knot nematodes, especially using the Auburn material
B.    Genetic mapping work in support of ARS (Jenkins)

Louisiana (Myers)

A.    Several dozen populations (F2 thru F4) in field sick plot nurseries incorporating known reniform and root knot resistant parents
B.    Initiating work on different reniform isolates and their reaction on reported resistance sources
C.    Collaborative project on heterosis QTLs. Assisting with Georgia fiber quality QTL project

Mississippi (Wallace)

A.    Working with Peggy Thaxton on nematode breeding program that integrates markers into a practical breeding program. Initially used Lonren material and about 40 lines in field testing at MSU, Stoneville and Auburn (Glass/Weaver). More recent work using Barbren source

B.    Note to group about a new MSU cotton breeding/geneticist position being advertised

Mississippi (Jenkins)

A.    GB713 has three(3) genes conferring reniform nematode resistance
B.    A new random mating population is being released. The population is based on 3 uplands crossed with the 18 barbadense chromosome substitution lines for five generations. Are selecting some recombinant inbred lines of the population as well

New Mexico (Zhang)

A.    Have been making several upland x pima crosses. In 2012 evaluating 1500 progeny rows and approximately 150 lines in field testing. Crosses being variously evaluated for drought, thrips, verticillium, etc.
B.    With regards to thrips, pima is more resistant that upland cotton. Some breeding lines are being evaluated, including some marker work (collaboration with Texas A&M, Dever)
C.    Have identified some QTL (one major) for verticillium
D.    Continued work with D8 cytoplasmic male sterility, a tribute to the original work of Dr. Stewart. Eight SNP markers associated with this have been found

Texas (Smith)

A.    Nematode work underway with the Al Bell material (collaboration w/Stelly). Also working with Jim Starr on root knot and GB713
B.    The ability of high tannin levels to reduce Pythium and Rhizoctonia seedling disease is work underway in collaboration with Starr. Some of this material also shows bacterial blight resistance and is in pedigrees different from those historically used for resistance
C.    Hague and Dever are both working on drought resistance
D.    Stelly is developing new chromosome substitution lines
E.    Hongbin is working with the cotton group to identify QTL for fiber quality. Mapping population DNA isolated and results should be forthcoming
F.    Usual cotton fiber quality work is underway and is a collaborative effort of Smith, Hague, Dever, Hequet. This includes the ELS lines and some specific work on fiber elongation

Texas (Hague)

A.    Working with K. Rathmore on the RNAi methodology to lower gossypol in the seed and putting it into better material. Second year of field testing is underway
B.    Field work with fleahopper resistant material is underway. Preliminary data looks good. Assistance from new A&M entomologist (G. Sword)
C.    Introgression of Sea Island genes into upland is ongoing

Texas (Dever)

A.    A thrips paper is coming soon
B.    Carol Kellys work on fiber quality has just been accepted for publication
C.    Was recently appointed to the National Genetics Resource Council. Topics for discussion by this group are being solicited

Texas (Percy)

A.    The cotton database handoff to Washington State University is nearly complete and a new version should be available Fall 2012. The support of Cotton Incorporated has been important
B.    J. Frelichowski and J. Love have been working on a digital image library of the collection. Over 2,000 accessions characterized so far

C.    L. Hinze and R. Percy (along with J. Yu, B. Scheffler and D. Fang) have been using a 105 SSR core marker set and have worked through 20-25% of the collection to date. This marker set, while working well on the tetraploids and largely on the A genome, is not as useful on the other genomes

S. Carolina (Campbell)

A.    Recently completed (and published in Crop Science) study on genetic gains in the Pee Dee germplasm. Results are leading to some rethinking on how to do breeding
B.    Completing the second year of screening 100 non-photoperiodic landraces under drought conditions. As an aside, there are some interesting fiber properties in this material

North Carolina (Kuraparthy)

A.    Has recently developed an easier method for making chromosome spreads in cotton, which are notoriously difficult
B.    Some interspecific hybrid work to develop new chromosome substitution lines is underway (using sturnianum)
C.    A nested association mapping project is underway in collaboration with M. Gore (ARS, AZ) and involves some 400 lines

Louisiana (Fang)

A.    A set of informative markers has been developed and tested on 193 elite upland cotton lines. The set uses 448 markers and identifies some 750 polymorphic loci. Multiplex bins have been developed in this collaborative with with Hinze and Percy (ARS, TX)
B.    A new, high density consensus map based upon the reference TM-1/3-79 cross has been submitted for publication

Business Meeting:

Administratively, Clarence Watson remains the advisor. The new NIFA representative is Tommy Valco, taking over from Ann Marie Thro.

The current project is coming up on its 5 year end date of September 30, 2012. How to proceed? Do we want a new MultiState Project (MSP) or move to a less formal Coordinating Committee? The amount of collaboration underway is important to this decision. Also important is that, at the Experiment Station level, a certain percentage of Hatch funds are dedicated to MSPs; no such funding exists for Coordinating Committees.

Some discussion ensued and a poll of those official members (a quorum was present) taken. Unanimous consent to remain a MSP.

Based upon this sentiment, a one year extension of the project is requested. This is an action item for Dr. Watson. During the extension period a new project will be written. Solicitations from members and interested parties for how to focus the new project will be made