Inspired by family legacy in sugarcane, AgCenter researcher aims to improve crop through quantitative genetics

(12/10/24) ST. GABRIEL, La. — Growing up on a farm in St. Martinville, Brayden Blanchard knew he wanted to make a living doing something related to sugarcane — the crop his family has cultivated for five generations.

As a senior in high school, Blanchard tagged along with his father to a grower meeting at the local sugar mill, where he met LSU AgCenter sugarcane specialist Kenneth Gravois. Intrigued as he listened to Gravois talk about his background in breeding new crop varieties, Blanchard’s future began to come into focus.

By: Olivia McClure, LSU AgCenter

I decided I wasn’t going to be a farmer,” Blanchard recalled. “But I was still very, very close and attached to the industry — and so it was about, ‘How do I make kind of a different type of an impact?’ I decided I wanted to be a sugarcane breeder then, and I just stuck with that throughout.”

Today, Blanchard is doing his part to help develop improved sugarcane varieties, having joined the AgCenter Sugar Research Station in St. Gabriel as an assistant professor this summer.

He specializes in quantitative genetics — a field of study that involves using technology to better understand how individual genes combine to influence traits like sucrose content or disease susceptibility. He hopes to use his skills to make the lengthy, rigorous breeding process more efficient.

Blanchard is no stranger to the Sugar Research Station. He worked there for several years, first as a student worker and later as a research associate, while pursuing bachelor’s and doctoral degrees at LSU.

It was at the station that Blanchard learned about the many years of work that go into creating a single new variety. When he saw farmers flock to the facility for field days, eager to hear the latest updates from the breeding program, he came to understand that a new variety offers the promise not just of improved yields — but also improved profits and livelihoods for farming families like his own. He was sure he had chosen the right career path.

“When I learned exactly what a new variety means to our growers, that was probably the biggest draw — because the impact that a new variety can have is astronomical when it comes to the productivity of the industry,” he said.

The breeding process

It takes about 12 years for a new sugarcane variety to be released to the public. The process begins with scientists crossing “parent” plants, generating thousands of genetically unique seedlings every year.

The varieties developed from these crosses are evaluated and whittled down through years of testing. The vast majority do not make the cut to become the next commercial variety.

Many factors go into deciding whether a variety is good enough to be released. It has proven a challenge to come up with something better than L 01-299, a consistent performer that has been popular with farmers for several years.

But it’s crucial to bring new genetics into the industry, Blanchard said. Growing a variety for a long time or on a lot of acreage gives diseases a chance to adapt to it. The Louisiana sugarcane industry learned this lesson in the mid-2000s, when nearly all of the state’s sugarcane fields were planted in LCP 85-384. The variety became susceptible to rust disease, and farmers suffered major losses.

“Genetically, that’s a nightmare for us because you don’t want that much of the industry reliant on one package of genes,” Blanchard said. “It really taught us what happens when you have that much of your acreage in one variety.”

Farmers also are always hoping for varieties that produce more sugar, that grow well in their soil type and that have other positive qualities. And Louisiana’s sugarcane industry is expanding geographically, creating demand for cold-tolerant varieties in northern parishes of the cane belt.

Finding plants that fit the bill has traditionally required planting and evaluating test plots, which is time consuming. While field trials will always be part of the variety development program, new technology along with the quantitative genetics approach are making it possible to focus time and effort on plants with the best odds of success.

Quantitative genetics can make a difference

Blanchard is the first to admit that his field of expertise can be hard to understand.

“Quantitative genetics is very abstract, and sometimes I even struggle with that,” he said. “But it’s all about dealing with error and increasing the efficiency of the breeding pipeline.”

Modern researchers like Blanchard have huge amounts of data at their fingertips thanks to drone imagery, sensors and DNA taken from plant samples. Computer tools enable scientists to make sense of all this information: Which genes are associated with a positive trait like disease resistance? Which plant flaws might be the result of environmental conditions, and which ones are due to genetic characteristics?

“We are becoming better and better at understanding what’s there and what we can manipulate,” Blanchard said. “Meanwhile, we’re getting better and better at identifying which crosses are more likely going to be high performing.”

Quantitative genetics helps zero in on the characteristics of plants and eliminate distractions.

“We deal with environmental systems — the most variable type of setting that you can deal with. We deal with human error, environmental error, spatial error,” he said. “The more we can use all of these tools in conjunction, the better we can measure the genetic components of a variety. What about its yield is dictated by its genetics and nothing else — not field variation, not environmental or human error. If we can home in on what the genetic merits of a variety are, we can advance varieties based on solely that.”

Blanchard’s training in quantitative genetics adds a new element to the AgCenter sugarcane breeding program, building on an existing molecular genetics component.

“We can use these tools to know that something is a good parent and recycle that particular clone back into the crossing program,” said Collins Kimbeng, AgCenter sugarcane breeder. “If the genes that we need to make progress are absent in our population pool, we would know about that earlier, and then that will help us to go somewhere to find those genes. Efficiencies are going to be improved with the new program that we have.”

The addition of quantitative genetics to the breeding program could even speed up the timeline for releasing a new variety, Blanchard said.

‘Let’s try something and see how it works’

Blanchard often thinks back on his childhood on his family’s farm.

“I loved the farm,” he said. “I loved growing up that way.”

He believes his passion for research stems from those early days when he would watch his father tinker with equipment adjustments and experiment with different strategies for growing his crop.

“The research aspect of ‘let’s try something and see how it works’ was always appealing to me, and I know it’s been very appealing to my dad,” he said. “I always tell people he’s one of the best farmers I know. He’s always been of that mind — ‘We’ll try this new piece of equipment or we’ll modify this and see how it works.’”

Blanchard said he learned a lot from his dad, who runs the farm with Blanchard’s younger brother, uncle and cousin. Now, he sometimes finds himself in a position to give some of his own advice.

“Developing a new variety is one of the only things that a farmer can’t do. It’s out of their hands. All they can do is test and see what they like about a variety,” Blanchard said. “So my dad and I have certainly gotten closer, and I lean on him for a ton of knowledge. But now, he also leans on me for the new information that we are generating.”