Climatic and Genetic Determinants of Biomass Production and Yield in the Temperate Model Grass Brachypodium distachyon
Conference Year
2024
Abstract
Temperature is one of the most important environmental factors that affects plant growth and crop yield and can be highly variable across time and space. Plants respond to different temperature regimes either through changing the expression of traits that allow them to escape, tolerate, or recover from thermal stress (phenotypic plasticity) or by evolving constitutive (non-plastic) adaptations to their climates of origin. One escape strategy that can have both a plastic and non-plastic component is flowering time, which affects vegetative growth and reproduction success through the developmental partitioning of resources. For this project, I propose to study the climatic and genetic determinants of variation in thermal performance across several populations of the model temperate grass Brachypodium distachyon (Pooideae) by phenotyping diverse genotypes of 18 populations from a variety of geographical locations. This is the first study to investigate the thermal performance of B. distachyon species in connection to climate and underlying genetic variation. Knowledge gained from this study will be useful in designing optimal growing conditions and/or genotypes to maximize vegetative or seed biomass for use in sustainable production of biofuels and/or grain.
Primary Faculty Mentor Name
Jill Preston
Status
Graduate
Student College
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Program/Major
Plant Biology
Primary Research Category
Life Sciences
Climatic and Genetic Determinants of Biomass Production and Yield in the Temperate Model Grass Brachypodium distachyon
Temperature is one of the most important environmental factors that affects plant growth and crop yield and can be highly variable across time and space. Plants respond to different temperature regimes either through changing the expression of traits that allow them to escape, tolerate, or recover from thermal stress (phenotypic plasticity) or by evolving constitutive (non-plastic) adaptations to their climates of origin. One escape strategy that can have both a plastic and non-plastic component is flowering time, which affects vegetative growth and reproduction success through the developmental partitioning of resources. For this project, I propose to study the climatic and genetic determinants of variation in thermal performance across several populations of the model temperate grass Brachypodium distachyon (Pooideae) by phenotyping diverse genotypes of 18 populations from a variety of geographical locations. This is the first study to investigate the thermal performance of B. distachyon species in connection to climate and underlying genetic variation. Knowledge gained from this study will be useful in designing optimal growing conditions and/or genotypes to maximize vegetative or seed biomass for use in sustainable production of biofuels and/or grain.