Plant Biology Associate Professor Jill Preston was recently awarded a National Science Foundation grant to research the evolution of temperature-regulated flowering in grasses, starting in spring 2022.
The project will provide insight into how flowering time in natural and domesticated grasses might react to global warming, identify novel flowering time genes for assisted breeding, and provide training to one postdoc and several graduate and undergraduate students; postdoc applications are encouraged for January 2023.
The aim of this four-year project is to determine:
- How potentially stressful temperatures can be used by plants to flower during times when conditions are favorable for high yield.
- When these behaviors evolved relative to the grass phylogeny and past climate change.
- How the genetic architecture of cold- and heat-regulated flowering intersect to shape flowering in variable climates.