Cereal Genetics and Molecular Genetics

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Genetics, Genomics and Biotechnology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 March 2024) | Viewed by 2516

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia
Interests: plant genetics and molecular biology; wheat taxonomy; breeding

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The journal Plants will jointly be publishing a Special Issue on Cereal Genetics and Molecular Genetics.

Despite all the achievements of the 20th century's the green revolution, food insecurity, malnutrition, and poverty are still troubling concerns in many regions of the world. Today’s agriculture faces numerous challenges relating to climate change, including biodiversity loss, soil fertility reduction, global warming, water availability, and so on.

Acquiring constant knowledge about Cereals and members of the Gramineae family, including wheat (Triticum L.), barley (Hordeum L.), rye (Secale L.), maize (Zea L.), rice (Oryza L.), etc., is essential for human beings’ survival since members of this family together supply a vast majority of the world’s calories.

The development of crop genetics and molecular methods for genetic analysis has significantly improved our understanding of the structure and behavior of cereal genomes. This progress has secured us with the production of cultivars for the next generation. Overall, developing next-generation cultivars plays a crucial role in reducing risks posed by climate change. Additionally, some cereals are considered an ideal model for studying the genetics of cultivated plants due to their close relationship.

This Special Issue will cover various areas, aiming to contribute to the overall knowledge of cereal genetics and molecular genetics from several aspects, including functional genomics, transformation, gene editing, and marker-assisted selective breeding. To speed up advancements in the field, we also encourage the submission of confirmatory findings and negative or inconclusive results which address rigorously tested hypotheses and aspects of molecular genetics . Regarding the publication format, we aim to gather original research articles and reports alongside reviews and opinions.

Prof. Nikolay P. Goncharov
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • cereal
  • genetics
  • molecular genetics
  • functional genomics
  • biodiversity
  • gene editing
  • marker-assisted selective breeding

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

25 pages, 6694 KiB  
Article
Genetic Diversity and Genome-Wide Association Study for the Phenology Response of Winter Wheats of North America, Western Asia, and Europe
by Adil El Baouchi, Mohammed Ibriz, Susanne Dreisigacker, Marta S. Lopes and Miguel Sanchez Garcia
Plants 2023, 12(23), 4053; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12234053 - 01 Dec 2023
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Abstract
Wheat is a staple food in many areas around the World. In the 20th century, breeders and scientists were able to boost wheat yield considerably. However, a yield plateau has become a concern and is threatening food security. Investments in cutting-edge technologies, including [...] Read more.
Wheat is a staple food in many areas around the World. In the 20th century, breeders and scientists were able to boost wheat yield considerably. However, a yield plateau has become a concern and is threatening food security. Investments in cutting-edge technologies, including genomics and precision phenology measurements, can provide valuable tools to drive crop improvement. The objectives of this study were to (i) investigate the genetic diversity in a set of winter wheat lines, (ii) characterize their phenological response under different vernalization and photoperiod conditions, and (iii) identify effective markers associated with the phenological traits. A total of 249 adapted genotypes of different geographical origin were genotyped using the 35K Axiom® Wheat Breeder’s Array. A total of 11,476 SNPs were used for genetic analysis. The set showed an average polymorphism information content of 0.37 and a genetic diversity of 0.43. A population structure analysis revealed three distinct subpopulations mainly related to their geographical origin (Europe, North America, and Western Asia). The lines of CGIAR origin showed the largest diversity and the lowest genetic distance to all other subpopulations. The phenology of the set was studied under controlled conditions using four combinations of long (19 h light) and short photoperiod (13 h light) and long vernalization (49 days at 5 °C) and no vernalization. With this, phenological traits such as earliness per se (Eps), relative response to vernalization (RRV), and relative response to photoperiod (RRP) were calculated. The phenotypic variation of growing degree days was significant in all phenology combinations. RRV ranged from 0 to 0.56, while RRP was higher with an overall average of 0.25. The GWAS analysis detected 30 marker-trait associations linked to five phenological traits. The highest significant marker was detected on chromosome 2D with a value of −log10(p) = 11.69. Only four loci known to regulate flowering exceeded the Bonferroni correction threshold of −log10(p) > 5.1. These results outline a solid foundation to address global food security and offer tremendous opportunities for advancing crop improvement strategies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cereal Genetics and Molecular Genetics)
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14 pages, 1983 KiB  
Article
Analysis of the Structural Organization and Expression of the Vrn-D1 Gene Controlling Growth Habit (Spring vs. Winter) in Aegilops tauschii Coss.
by Grigory Yurievich Chepurnov, Ekaterina Sergeevna Ovchinnikova, Alexander Genadevich Blinov, Nadezhda Nikolaevna Chikida, Mariya Khasbulatovna Belousova and Nikolay Petrovich Goncharov
Plants 2023, 12(20), 3596; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12203596 - 17 Oct 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 692
Abstract
The duration of the vegetative period is an important agronomic characteristic of cereal crops. It is mainly influenced by the Vrn (response to vernalization) and Ppd (response to photoperiod) genes. In this work, we searched for alleles of several known genes of these [...] Read more.
The duration of the vegetative period is an important agronomic characteristic of cereal crops. It is mainly influenced by the Vrn (response to vernalization) and Ppd (response to photoperiod) genes. In this work, we searched for alleles of several known genes of these two systems of response to external conditions in 15 accessions of Aegilops tauschii Coss. (syn. Ae. squarrosa L.), with the aim of studying the impact these alleles have on the vegetative period duration and growth habit. As a result, three allelic variants have been found for the Vrn-D1 gene: (i) one intact (winter type), (ii) one with a 5437 bp deletion in the first intron and (iii) one previously undescribed allele with a 3273 bp deletion in the first intron. It has been shown that the spring growth habit of Ae. tauschii can be developed due to the presence of a new allele of the Vrn-D1 gene. Significant differences in expression levels between the new allelic variant of the Vrn-D1 gene and the intact allele vrn-D1 were confirmed by qPCR. The new allele can be introgressed into common wheat to enhance the biodiversity of the spring growth habit and vegetative period duration of plants. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cereal Genetics and Molecular Genetics)
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