Growing pains: Elucidating the control logic of developmental transitions in Brassica (MORRIS_J17DTP2)

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The most direct impacts will be in the interdisciplinary training of the student, the novel approaches and fundamental new insights into the biology of developmental transitions and the sharing of these findings and data through high quality publications and the webportal. In addition to that, there are clear downstream economic impacts related to this research. Understanding the environmental sensitivity of the underlying regulatory pathways will be of pivotal importance for optimising crop performance in new climates. In Europe and most of the World, predicted climate change will demand mitigation strategies including changes in crop sowing and harvesting dates, the introduction of cultivars with different relationships between developmental transitions and seasonal progression, and breeding for robust performance under stressful conditions. This project will determine tissue-specific gene expression networks to understand developmental trade-offs and optimise strategies for the stable, synchronised production of quality vegetables in Brassica oleracea. This knowledge will underpin breeding strategies for optimizing future Brassica crops.