Publications by authors named "Steve Babben"

Roots are highly plastic organs enabling plants to adapt to a changing below-ground environment. In addition to abiotic factors like nutrients or mechanical resistance, plant roots also respond to temperature variation. Below the heat stress threshold, Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings react to elevated temperature by promoting primary root growth, possibly to reach deeper soil regions with potentially better water saturation.

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EARLY FLOWERING 3 (ELF3) is an important regulator of various physiological and developmental processes and hence may serve to improve plant adaptation which will be essential for future plant breeding. To expand the limited knowledge on barley ELF3 in determining agronomic traits, we conducted field studies with heterogeneous inbred families (HIFs) derived from selected lines of the wild barley nested association mapping population HEB-25. During two growing seasons, phenotypes of nearly isogenic HIF sister lines, segregating for exotic and cultivated alleles at the ELF3 locus, were compared for 10 developmental and yield-related traits.

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Increase in ambient temperatures caused by climate change affects various morphological and developmental traits of plants, threatening crop yield stability. In the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, EARLY FLOWERING 3 (ELF3) plays prominent roles in temperature sensing and thermomorphogenesis signal transduction. However, how crop species respond to elevated temperatures is poorly understood.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study focuses on identifying genetic factors that enhance frost tolerance (FroT) in winter wheat, which is crucial for improving crop yields in areas prone to heavy frost.
  • - Researchers conducted genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on 276 winter wheat genotypes, leading to the identification of 53 significant markers linked to FroT across 23 QTL regions on 11 chromosomes.
  • - Importantly, the study discovered eight previously unknown FroT QTLs, providing new insights into the genetic mechanisms of frost resistance in wheat and potential strategies for breeding frost-tolerant varieties.
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Global warming is one of the most detrimental aspects of climate change, affecting plant growth and development across the entire life cycle. This Review explores how different stages of development are influenced by elevated temperature in both wild plants and crops. Starting from seed development and germination, global warming will influence morphological adjustments, termed thermomorphogenesis, and photosynthesis primarily during the vegetative phase, as well as flowering and reproductive development.

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Background: Understanding the genetic basis of frost tolerance (FT) in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is essential for preventing yield losses caused by frost due to cellular damage, dehydration and reduced metabolism. FT is a complex trait regulated by a number of genes and several gene families.

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Recent declines in costs accelerated sequencing of many species with large genomes, including hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Although the draft sequence of bread wheat is known, it is still one of the major challenges to developlocus specific primers suitable to be used in marker assisted selection procedures, due to the high homology of the three genomes.

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The need for higher yielding and better-adapted crop plants for feeding the world's rapidly growing population has raised the question of how to systematically utilize large genebank collections with their wide range of largely untouched genetic diversity. Phenotypic data that has been recorded for decades during various rounds of seed multiplication provides a rich source of information. Their usefulness has remained limited though, due to various biases induced by conservation management over time or changing environmental conditions.

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