Optimising nutritional quality of crops.

The aim of this project is to improve the nutritional quality of crop plants. This crop improvement will be achieved via specifically targeted genetic manipulation of corps, and a substantial proportion of the proposed research is directed at two major European crops, maize and potato. Exploitation of the results in these crops is facilitated by the involvement of the commercial participants. The crop improvement will be via genetic modification of inherent plant biosynthetic pathways to improve flux through precursor synthesis and amino acid biosynthesis pathways. In addition, the transgenic expression of novel proteins or enhanced expression of endogenous proteins with high content of these speficif amino acids will further pull flux through these pathways. it is anticipated that the best performance will be achieved by a combination is being given to safety aspects and consumer acceptence, and every ffort will be made to utilise acceptable genetic manipulation technologies and to identify pleiotropic effects. The inclusion of breeders as partners serves to help focus the project on these traits and the public acceptance of product and will ensure the essential transfer of knowledge and product to the marketplace.