About the project
This project directly addresses the impact of climate change on food security. It will investigate how wheat plants respond to high temperature and drought using lines with altered levels of regulators of these responses. Results will be used to help develop wheat varieties that are more resilient to climate change.
A major consequence of climate change is that crop plants will need to cope with increased temperatures and drought which directly affects crop yield. It is estimated that for every 1°C increase in global temperature, wheat yields will be reduced by >5%. This is a major problem as wheat provides about 20% of all calories and proteins for the human diet (read more on Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations website). We have been investigating how wheat responds to its environment through the Phytochrome Interacting Factor (PIF) family of regulators, which are proposed as targets of genes responsible for the Green Revolution. Manipulation of PIF gene expression will allow us to understand and improve the response of wheat to temperature and drought. For example, in Arabidopsis the PIF4 gene plays a critical role in regulating growth in response to temperature. We have identified mutants in three wheat PIF genes, including two closely related to Arabidopsis PIF4, and have also constructed two wheat PIF overexpressing lines.
The aim of this project is to test whether these lines show altered responses to drought and increased temperatures and to characterize these responses both physiologically and through gene expression analysis.
We will also use CRISPR-Cas9 technology to identify additional PIF mutants and to produce stacked mutants lacking multiple PIF genes. This will allow us to build a complete picture of the role of this gene family in response to a changing environment and to inform strategies to develop more climate-resilient crop varieties.
As well as Professor Matthew Terry, you will also be supervised by organisations other than the University of Southampton, including
