Tuberisation in potato is a major photoperiodic developmental programme in which stolons form starch-rich tubers. The earliness of tuberisation dictates the time to crop maturity and so is a crucial factor in potato agronomy. Exploitation of the naturally occurring variation in tuberisation onset provides a route to breeding improved varieties for different latitudes, harvest times and markets. Recent focus in this field has been on the regulation of a FLOWERING LOCUS T orthologue termed StSP6A, a positive regulator of tuberisation. These studies have facilitated development of tuberisation models. However, data from JHI and other literature suggest that these models are incomplete. Now work at JHI has identified a new player, a TFL-1 orthologue that appears to act as a negative regulator of tuberisation. The aims of POTENT are: to determine the binding partners and detailed expression pattern of TFL-1 in the stolon to develop a refined model of tuber initiation; to use a transcriptomic approach applied to TFL-1 transgenic lines to unravel tuber life cycle processes; to investigate the role of TFL-1 in tolerance to abiotic stress; to determine the combinations of StCDF1 and TFL-1 alleles possessed by potato varieties from different maturity classes, that impact on tuber initiation. The project will serve a training vehicle for the experienced researcher (ER) to enhance her portfolio of research skills, to restart her career and so increase her ability to innovate in this area of food security. The ER will add an extra dimension to current research activities in the host organisation by sharing her current expertise. Working with secondment partner Agrico UK, the outcomes will be of commercial and societal interest and a raft of measures will be taken to protect IPR and disseminate results to wide audiences. The project will leave the ER well-qualified to achieve professional maturity and will have a legacy of collaboration and new research avenues to be explored.

During meiosis, recombination (crossing-over, CO) drives the exchange of genetic materials and releases genetic diversity by creating new combinations of alleles within and among chromosomes. CO is exploited in plant breeding through the generation of large populations of recombinants from which genetically improved individuals are selected. However in some economically important crops such as barley, the rate of improvement has plateaued. One hypothesis is that this is due to constraints on the locations of CO. In large genome cereals CO is restricted to the ends of chromosomes, excluding approximately two thirds of the genome from the breeding process. This project focuses on three critically important questions about CO in barley: Why is it restricted to the telomeric ends of chromosomes? What proteins are the key players and what are their roles in controlling CO? And, what strategies can be established to effectively increase or redistribute CO in CO-poor regions? I will address these questions in four Work Packages. In WP1 I will induce, identify and molecularly characterise putative meiotic mutants both phenotypically (at the plant level) and molecularly by captured exome sequencing. In WP2 I will characterise these mutants cytologically, genetically and by complementation to understand how the mutations affect recombination. In WPs 3 and 4, I will apply novel methods to isolate the specific cells undergoing meiosis, and use transcriptomics, targeted proteomics and pull-down assays to investigate how meiosis is regulated. I will focus on complexes that mark the sites of DNA double strand break (DSB) formation that identify where CO will occur. I will characterise these sites according to those resolved as either crossing-over or non-crossing-over events and relate their physical location to COs observed in population genetic data. Finally, I will evaluate strategies for modifying the distribution of recombination, and application in plant breeding

The goal of this project is to exploit ancient Northern European landraces and improve the ability of the important cereal, barley, to acquire and utilize nutrients from the soil more efficiently. Climate change pressures and degradation of arable lands are expected to increase the need to produce feed and food even in unfavorable environments, such as marginal soils with inherent nutrient limitations. Thus, it will be a major breeding focus to select traits associated with enhanced crop robustness in order to secure the future demand for plant products. In this context, recent work has demonstrated a superior capacity of Northern European barley landraces, adapted to marginal soils, to acquire and allocate essential micronutrients. This project aims to advance our knowledge of adaptive traits conferring nutrient use efficiency. This will be achieved by bridging disciplines of plant genetics and plant nutrition, not only by unravelling functions of individual genes, but also by capturing the compensatory adjustments at the transcriptome and molecular physiology levels, preserved in landraces but seemingly lost from modern elite cultivars. The overall scientific objective is to identify the genetic control of nutrient stress tolerance, and specifically to: (i) use exome capture sequencing to identify candidate genes involved in nutrient deficiency tolerance; (ii) study the transcriptional responses of these genes under nutrient stress and their dynamics with time after stress recovery; (iii) describe in detail the physiological responses contributing to improved nutrient stress tolerance of major cereal crops. The proposed project will deliver quantitative information and a predictive understanding of nutrient stress tolerance and will provide new breeding material. The findings will act as an exemplar for other major cereals to expand cultivation and stabilize yields in marginal previously unproductive land.