气候变化带来包含世界上最为稀缺的水资源在内的农业生产环境的恶化。非洲将更加干旱贫瘠并导致独脚金杂草蔓延，原本低下的作物产量更低、农业更加脆弱，人们收入更加低下。培育高产耐旱抗独脚金新品种是打破这种恶性循坏的有效途径。我们利用非洲主要粮食作物C4模式高粱开展耐旱抗独脚金杂草研究。将筛选中国杂交（甜）高粱、澳大利亚与美国的高粱资源，非洲地方小种与野生近缘种，建立耐旱、抗独脚金核心种质，利用新一代测序技术解析基因组与独脚金抗性变异关联、高粱-独脚金互作过程转录本和基因表达谱，精细定位独脚金抗性基因，并通过遗传转化和TILLING克隆和鉴定。在此基础上，利用分子标记辅助叠加相关基因，创制高产、耐旱、抗独脚金的新种质。进行比较示范试验。本项目的完成将获得高产、耐旱、抗独脚金种质资源20份、精细定位4个抗独脚金遗传位点至400kb以内，克隆1个重要抗性基因，创制高产、耐旱、抗独脚金新种质10份。

The demand for food, fibre and fuel production is continuing to grow amidst challenges already caused by highly degraded soils and in the face of accelerated climate change. Two closely related challenges with a negative impact on sorghum yield are the frequent droughts and the associated epidemic of Striga parasitism to plants. This project aims to employ omic tools to develop superior sorghum genotypes with tolerance to drought and resistance to Striga. Drought tolerant and Striga resistant sorghum genotypes already identified from local collections in Africa (Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia) will be used for identification and functional characterization of genetic loci responsible for drought tolerance and Striga resistance traits and further introgressed into promising farmer-preferred varieties. Expertise and facilities available in China will be leveraged in functional characterization of promising genes, TILLING and transcriptome analysis. Some of the high yielding sweet and grain sorghum developed in China will also be introduced into Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda and further bred for adaptation into the regions of interest. The project proposes to recruit two PhD students and to train one postdoctoral research fellow. Some of the expected outputs from this project include the improvement of sorghum productivity (yield) through breeding of more resilient genotypes, addition to the number of trained scientists in ‘omics’ and the identification of novel genes for more efficient sorghum breeding in Africa.