Investigating Relationship Between Aspects of A Gene Regulatory Network and Quantitative Crop Traits

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Since the advent of modern farming, crop improvement has always been an important aim. In the face of major global challenges which are now more eagerly identified, including an increasing global population, anthropogenically induced changes to the climate and pressure to shift away from the current fertilizer-reliant production, crop improvement is essential to meet the demands of a changing world. Our ability to improve upon and develop novel beneficial crop traits has significantly improved over the last century and following the green revolution, although the ability to maintain this trajectory is limited by allelic diversity. While genetic diversity at coding sequences has been heavily exploited for crop improvement, quantitative traits are also influenced by sequence variation at non-coding regulatory regions. This project will investigate the link between gene-regulatory elements and quantitative traits by looking at the impact of a group of transcription factors in stem-cell reprogramming and organ differentiation in plants.