Mining genetic diversity in wild barley for disease resistance

在气候变化的威胁下，全球人口不断增加，全球货物和人员流动不断增加，农业面临的挑战从未如此紧迫。大麦（Hordeum vulgare subsp. vulgare）是最早的驯化作物之一，出现在距今10，000年前。大麦已经并继续受到几种植物疾病的影响，包括锈病、霉菌、稻瘟病、黑穗病、黑穗病等。大麦的野生祖先是H.普通亚种spontaneum，一种广泛分布于从北非到中国西南部的种。野生大麦是驯化大麦的原始基因库，因此，可以通过育种直接获得野生大麦以改良大麦。该项目旨在了解野生大麦中的免疫受体多样性，并确定可用于改善驯化大麦的基因。在项目期间将获得的技能包括生物信息学（高通量基因组学，大数据），遗传学（双亲和关联），现代植物育种和分子生物学。这个博士项目将由塞恩斯伯里实验室的Matthew Moscou博士监督，是与英国大麦育种领导者KWS的工业合作。Moscou小组专注于了解草的免疫力，目标是在主要谷类作物（大麦，小麦，水稻和玉米）中设计持久的抗病性。

Under the threat of climate change, an expanding worldwide population, and increasing movement of goods and people worldwide, the challenges for agriculture have never been more pressing. Barley (Hordeum vulgare subsp. vulgare) was one of the earliest domesticated crops which occurred 10,000 years before present. Barley has and continues to be impacted by several plant disease including rust, mildew, blast, scald, smut, and others. The wild progenitor of barley is H. vulgare subsp. spontaneum, a species with a wide range from North Africa to southwest China. Wild barley is in the primary gene pool of domesticated barley; therefore, it can be directly accessed through breeding to improve barley. This project sets out to understand immune receptor diversity in wild barley and to identify genes that can be used to improve domesticated barley. Skills that will be gained during the project include bioinformatics (high-throughput genomics, big data), genetics (biparental and association), modern plant breeding, and molecular biology. This PhD project will be supervised by Dr. Matthew Moscou at The Sainsbury Laboratory and is an industrial collaboration with KWS, a leader in barley breeding in the UK. The Moscou group focuses on understanding immunity in the grasses, with the goal of engineering durable disease resistance in the major cereal crops (barley, wheat, rice, and maize).