EASTBIO: Defining the Genetic Basis of Barley Metabolite Content to Improve Crop Quality and Resilience in an Uncertain Environment

Barley is a crop of great importance with respect to both winter barley for animal feeds and malting barley for the renowned Scottish whisky industry and the ever-expanding microbrewery sector. Only high-quality barley from a limited number of varieties are taken forward to malting and distilling, therefore greatly influencing its market value.

Developing ‘green’ barley varieties that will produce uniform high malting quality grains under future changing climate conditions, is therefore of great importance to the farming sector, malting, distilling and brewing industries, as well as the UK economy as a whole.

Key to crop quality and yield under a changing environment is the capacity to maintain carbon assimilation in photosynthetic organs and export to developing grains under a range of environmental conditions. This requires constant metabolic adjustment in response to environmental inputs to ensure optimised metabolism under stressful conditions. Crucial to this proposal is to define the genetic architecture underpinning the optimisation of metabolism as a first step towards breeding metabolically resilient barley. A further objective is to link an understanding of metabolic resilience to key yield and quality traits.

To achieve this it will be essential to screen large barley populations to carry out a genome wide association study (GWAS) to identify Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) and metabolomic (mQTL), that are associated with high photosynthetic rates and efficient grain import (especially of starch and sugars that are associated with high distilling qualities), as well as variation in the metabolome. Understanding the genetics underpinning these traits and using this knowledge in the form of genetic markers based on the QTLs and mQTLS identified via marker assisted selection (MAS) to develop new barley germplasm, could lead to reduced inputs and environmental pollution.

The collective analysis of small molecules and how they interact in a biological system is known as the metabolome. Metabolomics involves the identification and comparative (or relative) quantification of the thousands of cellular metabolites and their interactions. The candidate will be trained in Gas Chromatography (GC) and Liquid Chromatography (LC) - Mass Spectrometry (MS) based metabolite profiling and metabolite identification, as well as a range of bioinformatics techniques in data processing, annotation, statistical analysis, and modelling. The candidate will also benefit from training in integrative biology, handling, and modelling both genomic and metabolomic data
The aim of the PhD will be to assess and improve our understanding of barley development and grain composition, and linking these traits to understand why certain lines show higher photosynthetic capacity, i.e. production of sugars and starch in green tissues and the efficiency of their filling in the grain, whilst producing grains with high distilling quality.

The project offers excellent interdisciplinary research training, developing skills in plant growth and phenotyping, biochemical analysis and metabolomics, as well as statistical analysis and bioinformatics workflows and techniques for data processing, annotation and modelling.

Application Process:
To apply for an EASTBIO PhD studentship http://www.eastscotbiodtp.ac.uk/, follow the instructions below:
Check FindaPhD https://www.findaphd.com/phds/program/bbsrc-eastbio-doctoral-training-partnership-call-for-applications-for-2021/?p1048 for our available projects and contact potential supervisors before you apply.

After you have discussed the projects of interest to you with the project supervisors, download and complete our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion survey https://edinburgh.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/eastbio-dtp-equality-diversity-inclusion-form-2021 and then fill in the EASTBIO Application Form and submit the application form plus your academic transcripts to [Email Address Removed].

Send the EASTBIO Reference Form to your two academic/professional referees, and ask them to submit these directly to [Email Address Removed] (Link to the form can be found here: http://www.eastscotbiodtp.ac.uk/how-apply-0)

If you are nominated by the supervisor(s) of the EASTBIO PhD project you wish to apply for, they will provide a Supervisor Support Statement.

All EASTBIO (online) interviews will be in the week 8-12 February 2020 with awards made the following week.