New Horizons in Plant Biotechnology: Resequencing the barley exome to search for allelic variants in loci controlling plant adaptation to environment
“Barley is known for its outstanding capacity to grow over a wide range of latitudes (from Iceland to north Africa) and conditions (from cool climates to the limits of the desert), a capacity largely dependent on the mechanisms controlling flowering time in response to vernalization, photoperiod and temperature. The synchronization of barley life cycle with the environmental climatic conditions is the first requirement to limit the impact of stress and assure yield. Spring cultivars avoid excessive frost as well as early flowing cultivars avoid terminal drought, and the combination of growth habit and response to photoperiod makes barley the most flexible crop in terms of adaptation to climates and climate changes. The seminar will present the results of a large allele mining experiment made with an exome capture and sequencing dataset from more than 400 barley accessions representing the global barley genetic diversity. The work has developed a new tool for the analysis of genetic diversity (allelic variations, copy number variations and presence/absence of paralogs) based on sequencing information and depicts the full variation present in key loci controlling response to photoperiod (Ppd H1), vernalization (Vrn H1) and frost tolerance (CBF)”