Future-proofing our food: increasing tolerance to abiotic stress in hexaploid bread wheat using transcriptomics

Abstract

Over four billion people around the world rely on hexaploid bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)
as a major constituent of their diet. However, a warming climate, with increasingly common
fluctuations in temperature and rainfall, threatens wheat yields, and, subsequently, the lives
and livelihoods of billions of people who depend on the crop for food. To future-proof wheat
against a hostile and variable climate, where periods of heat and drought stress occur more
intensely and unpredictably in some regions, a better understanding of how the response to
these stresses, and inherent stress tolerance are regulated is required. This thesis introduces
the YoGI wheat landrace panel, a diverse selection of 342 accessions taken from several
landrace collections, and utilizes them to better understand the regulation of the transcriptional
and physiological responses to early heat and drought stress exposure, as well as the
transcriptional regulation of inherent thermotolerance. This thesis primarily employs a network
approach, weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA), to identify candidate
master-regulators of these processes, whilst comparative transcriptomic analyses provide
insights in to how the wheat transcriptome is affected by these stresses. This thesis also
examines whether exposure to, and then removal of, early heat stress leads to any
physiological changes and yield effects later in development, identifying a novel delayed
flowering phenotype after this stress treatment, and potential transcriptional determinants of
this delay. In all, this thesis represents an exploratory examination of the hexaploid wheat
transcriptome; identifying genes which may determine inherent stress tolerance, or which may
act to coordinate the transcriptional and physiological responses to heat and drought stresses
– genes which could, one day, aid the production of climate-resilient wheat varieties, better
able to grow in an increasingly hostile climate

Metadata

Supervisors:	Harper, Andrea and Bancroft, Ian
Related URLs:	publication of chapter 3 (Related publication) publication of chapter 2 (Related publication) publication of chapter 6 (Related publication)
Keywords:	transcriptomics, stress, drought, heat, flowering, wheat
Awarding institution:	University of York
Academic Units:	The University of York > Biology (York)
Depositing User:	Mr Liam John Barratt
Date Deposited:	15 Apr 2024 08:47
Last Modified:	15 Apr 2024 08:47
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:etheses.whiterose.ac.uk:34674

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