Master's thesis projects (30 or 60 ECTS)

Faba bean is a protein crop that is used mostly for animal feed in Sweden today, but increased cultivation and use in food will probably be seen in the future. For increased use in different food applications, cookability of seeds is of importance. Cooking time, cooking evenness, and also seed quality and seed coat characters, can be important factors that determines cookability. In this project, a panel of diverse faba bean accessions will be evaluated for cooking time and evenness, starch quality and seed coat hardness. This data will yield new knowledge about cookability of faba bean that can help define future plant breeding targets.

Supervisor: Åsa Grimberg, asa.grimberg@slu.se

Green leaves, e.g., in the form of sugar beet leaves or lucerne, can be a source of protein for both humans and non-ruminant animals. But first the proteins need to be extracted. Our process method start with pressing juice from the leaves, resulting in a green juice containing most of the protein, and a fibrous pulp. However, the recovery rates low, as much of the protein remains in the pulp. In this project, we investigate different methods for increasing the protein recovery, and you would be part of this development.

Supervisor: Anna-Lovisa Nynäs, anna-lovisa.nynas@slu.se

Cultivation of crops in North Sweden faces a major challenge in the short field season, which limits the number of crops that can be grown and reach full maturity. One way to possibly compensate for the short field season could be to identify, through plant breeding, crop varieties that have the ability to take advantage of the greater number of sun hours (long days) during June and July when northern Sweden basically has continuous light. Such varieties can then conceivably develop faster and reach maturity within the shorter field season available. When breeding for better variants of the oilcrop turnip rape (Brassica rapa spp olifera) for cultivation in North Sweden, beside improving its winter hardiness it is also important to take into consideration its ability to respond positively to the long-day light conditions.

This project will use accessions of turnip rape identified to respond positively to constant light (mimic long day conditions in the North). These accessions will be grown in the Biotron under normal day/night light conditions and constant light respectively. Different phenotypic traits of the plant material will be recorded at specific time points as a measure of the different accession. Plant material from the different accessions and in the different light treatments will be sampled and analysed for gene expression (trancriptome analysis). Phenotypic and genotypic data will be analysed for markers (SNP) linked to a positive response to the long day condition.

Supervisor: Anders Carlsson, anders.carlsson@slu.se