Project description
How climate shapes barley
In crops grown under increasingly unpredictable climate conditions, understanding how environmental stress disrupts flowering and grain formation is becoming essential for securing stable yields. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the LABILE project investigates why some Ethiopian barley plants show an environmentally sensitive ‘labile’ spike phenotype, in which missing spikelets and partially filled grains appear irregularly within the same ear, reducing yield stability. It combines field studies with genetic mapping and controlled-environment experiments to understand how climate conditions such as temperature and rainfall influence floral development. The project’s goal is to deliver markers, assays and new knowledge that breeders can use to develop barley varieties with more stable grain production under climate stress.
Objective
Barley yield in rain-fed, variable climates depends on stable spikelet fertility. Yet in Ethiopian landraces, a striking labile (“irregular”) inflorescence phenotype reveals dramatic environmental sensitivity. Plants carrying labile can shift within a single spike between fertile and sterile spikelets, creating mosaics that resemble both two- and six-row types. This unique instability, long recognized in Ethiopian barley but never explained, offers a natural entry point to understand how the environment writes into floral fate.
The LABILE project will link field ecology to gene function. First, I will quantify labile penetrance across Ethiopian altitude gradients (1500-3500 m) and relate missing florets per spike to night temperature, rainfall, and soils. Second, I will fine-map the causal interval on chromosome 2H, integrate PacBio HiFi sequencing of the Ethiopian parent, and test candidate genes with CRISPR edits in a six-rowed background. Third, I will develop a controlled-environment assay that mimics Ethiopian cool-night and warm-night regimes to resolve environmental tipping points and uncover the gene-regulatory basis. Finally, if resources permit, I will extend to haplotype sequencing of Ethiopian landraces and pilot chromatin profiling. The outcomes will be transformative: identification of the causal allele, diagnostic markers, and an easy field assay for penetrance, all enabling breeders to select for stable grain set under stress. Beyond barley, LABILE will establish a general strategy for decoding adaptive plasticity at the gene-environment interface. Conducted at CPSFG-IEB Olomouc with strong support from IPK Gatersleben (Germany), the fellowship will deliver advanced training in genomics, phenomics, and genome editing while strengthening international collaboration with Ethiopian partners. LABILE ultimately positions barley improvement for resilience under the climate extremes of tomorrow.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology
- social sciences sociology demography fertility
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics chromosomes
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture grains and oilseeds cereals
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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165 02 Praha
Czechia
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