NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2019: Trait Stability and Broad Adaptation over Forty Years of Selection in a Global Wheat Breeding Program

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This action funds an NSF National Plant Genome Initiative Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2019. The fellowship supports a research and training plan in a host laboratory for the Fellow who also presents a plan to broaden participation in biology. The title of the research and training plan for this fellowship to Margaret R. Krause is "Trait Stability and Broad Adaptation over Forty Years of Selection in a Global Wheat Breeding Program". The host institutions for the fellowship are the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)/Kansas State University, and the sponsoring scientists are Drs. Matthew Reynolds and Jesse Poland. Crop varieties that maintain consistent yields across a range of environmental stresses are of value to farmers, particularly those who are resource-poor with limited ability to recover from crop losses. Understanding the genetic basis of trait stability across a gradient of environmental conditions will enhance the development of broadly adapted, climate-resilient crop varieties. However, trait stability is expensive and laborious to measure due to the extensive multi-environment trials required to produce reliable estimates. Since 1979, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico has sent wheat breeding material to collaborators around the world for evaluation each year. These trials provide a rare opportunity to improve our understanding of 1) the genetic controls underlying trait stability in wheat and 2) how the wheat genome has evolved over forty years of selection for broad adaptation. Broader impacts include developing data analytics training modules for plant breeders from developing countries. Training objectives includes acquiring expertise in genomics and bioinformatics at Kansas State University, and in the analysis of weather datasets at CIMMYT's research center at Henan Agricultural University in China. The project will integrate genomic information, weather data, and phenotypic trait records from forty years of CIMMYT's international trials to understand the genetic architecture of phenotypic stability and the effects of long-term artificial selection for broad adaptation on the wheat genome. The project will develop robust estimates of stability for yield and other traits from data records that were collected at more than 500 locations ranging from Norway to New Zealand and spanning more than 3,500 meters in elevation. The project will also generate whole genome re-sequencing of CIMMYT's founder lines and weather datasets linked to the international trial locations. Data and methodologies will be made publically available in peer reviewed journal articles, on CIMMYT's Research Data & Software Repository Network (https://data.cimmyt.org/), and through Dataverse, an open source public data repository (dataverse.org).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.