Advisor: Lewis Lukens [1], Plant Agriculture

Proposed co-advisor: TBD

Grain crops’ yields have greatly increased under artificial selection. While the molecular bases for these gains are largely unknown, based on a large-scale transcriptome and field analysis, we have identified a number of regulatory alleles that account for notable yield improvements in Canadian wheat. One objective of this project is to explore if these selected alleles are present in ancestral genetic diversity, or if they are novel and due to recent mutation. Wheat yields have improved within different populations adapted to different environments. A second objective is to identify if the same regulatory alleles contributed to wheat improvement across diverse environments.

This is a one-semester project. The student is required to occasionally be on-site.

Knowledge/Skills

Bioinformatics coding skills