Barley yield formation under abiotic stress depends on the interplay between flowering time genes and environmental cues

Abstract

Since the dawn of agriculture, crop yield has always been impaired through abiotic stresses. In a field trial across five locations worldwide, we tested three abiotic stresses, nitrogen deficiency, drought and salinity, using HEB-YIELD, a selected subset of the wild barley nested association mapping population HEB-25. We show that barley flowering time genes Ppd-H1, Sdw1, Vrn-H1 and Vrn-H3 exert pleiotropic effects on plant development and grain yield. Under field conditions, these effects are strongly influenced by environmental cues like day length and temperature. For example, in Al-Karak, Jordan, the day length-sensitive wild barley allele of Ppd-H1 was associated with an increase of grain yield by up to 30% compared to the insensitive elite barley allele. The observed yield increase is accompanied by pleiotropic effects of Ppd-H1 resulting in shorter life cycle, extended grain filling period and increased grain size. Our study indicates that the adequate timing of plant development is crucial to maximize yield formation under harsh environmental conditions. We provide evidence that wild barley germplasm, introgressed into elite barley cultivars, can be utilized to improve grain yield. The presented knowledge may be transferred to related crop species like wheat and rice securing the rising global food demand for cereals.

Pearl millet genomic vulnerability to climate change in West Africa highlights the need for regional collaboration

“…The northern edge of the cultivation areas of both early and late flowering pearl millet was found to be the regions with the highest genomic vulnerabilities. Flowering time is an important trait for yield elaboration in annual plant species, as it synchronizes reproduction with climate conditions, thereby ensuring grain filling under favorable environmental conditions 34 – 36 . An increase in temperature combined with a reduction in precipitation is likely to affect late flowering varieties, in particular by increasing evapotranspiration at maturation 5 .…”

Phenolic Metabolites from Barley in Contribution to Phenome in soil Moisture Deficit

“…Plant organisms can adapt to living in stressful conditions. Adaptation to the moisture deficit is a result of changes introduced to genomes of individuals of a species in the course of evolution as a result of mutations or breeders’ efforts [ 3 ]. This allows to minimize the detrimental effect of this stress and increase the likelihood of obtaining some crop yield despite a permanent or temporary water deficit.…”

Physical geography, isolation by distance and environmental variables shape genomic variation of wild barley (Hordeum vulgare L. ssp. spontaneum) in the Southern Levant

“…Given the strong influence of isolation-by-distance on genomic variation, adaptive genetic variation is likely confounded with population structure. Mapping populations with sufficient genome recombination evaluated in different environments allow for disentangling adaptive and neutral variation, as shown in such populations developed from wild and cultivated barley (Herzig et al 2018;Wiegmann et al 2019). Whole genome resequencing followed by computational analysis can be rationalized to analyze a large number of genotypes such as the complete B1K population.…”