With traditional plant breeding methods, a long time is spent waiting for plants to be fully grown to identify those ideal for breeding. In addition, not all traits can be detected visually, so it is necessary to have tools to characterize plants at the molecular level at an early stage.
SciCorp Laboratories, provides solutions to enhance your plant breeding program by using specialized techniques that give information on the molecular characteristics of your plants or seeds at early life stages. By knowing the genetics of your plants on the molecular level, you will make accurate decisions about your breeding process.
SciCorp is a registered Biotechnology laboratory with more than 14 years of experience serving the agricultural, food, and feed industries. Some of the services we provide to help you achieve optimal plant breeding outcomes include:
Genetically stable parent seeds are essential for producing uniform plants with desired traits. Therefore, we can determine the level of molecular similarity of your parent seeds to determine how stable they are in growing desired plants. This can also identify variations in your parent lines, thereby preventing the production of suboptimal plants at an early stage.
It is essential to establish that your breeding program successfully produced hybrid plants from the intended parent lines and that foreign pollination was not involved. By analyzing your hybrid seeds' molecular profiles and comparing them to their parents, we can determine their level of genetic purity.
The stability of parent seeds and the purity of hybrids are determined, amongst others, by ultra-thin layer isoelectric focusing. This technique enables us to visualize and compare the molecular profiles of samples and identify any off-types, self-fertilized plants, and segregation within samples.
Determining the relatedness between samples provides valuable information and facilitates decision-making about your breeding program. We use short tandem repeat DNA markers called microsatellites to give information on the genetic profiles of samples. These genetic profiles are then compared, enabling genetic relatedness between samples to be determined.
Microsatellite markers can also be used for variety comparisons, i.e. to determine if varieties are genetically similar.
We determine specific desirable traits within plant samples using molecular markers. Such as drought resistance, disease resistance, rust tolerance or herbicide resistance, susceptibility, homozygosity, and heterozygosity can be identified early. This information can then be used to select plants with desired traits to be used in plant breeding programs.
When producing genetically modified plants exhibiting a specific trait, we can determine the purity of that trait in your product. Our GMO tests are ISO17025 (SANAS*) accredited, and we are authorized to issue certificates stating the GMO status of samples for commercial, import and export purposes.
SciCorp is registered with DALRRD (Department of Agriculture, Land Reform, and Rural Development) and holds SANAS ISO 17025 accreditation for GMO, microbiological, and molecular testing in food, feed, and seed methods. Our testing portfolio spans ISTA-accredited physical seed testing, molecular plant breeding support, authenticity verification, GMO detection, and comprehensive chemical and food safety analyses. Additionally, SciCorp offers a range of products for clients' in-house testing needs, including the Path-Chek® line for food pathogens, lateral flow sticks for allergens and mycotoxins, ELISA and LFS kits for GMO testing, and Anchor germination paper for seed testing.
