Event Date
Eyal Fridman, Group Leader, Volcani Agricultural Research Organization (ARO), Israel, presents "Cytonuclear-Driven Plasticity/Stability in Barley Evolution: Hedging Bets in Changing Environments?"
Fridman leads a research group at the Plant Sciences Institute at Volcani Agricultural Research Organization (ARO), Israel, where they study the evolution, genetics, and molecular basis of crop plants' plasticity and their relevance for breeding. When Fridman is not chasing alleles and genes in the lab and field, he jogs with his dog Leo, scuba dives, reads, and works to balance work with being a husband and a father to his four fast-growing children.
Their research group has made significant strides in the field of plant sciences. They have recently discovered the loss of circadian clock thermal plasticity in barley under domestication, which has profound implications for understanding the evolution of crop plants. They have also identified loci under selection that modulate both clock and yield in the field, shedding light on the genetic factors that influence crop productivity. Another key discovery is the hitherto unknown contribution of chloroplast gene alleles to barley robustness under abiotic stress. This breakthrough has led them to develop a new interspecific cytonuclear multiparent population (CMPP) for biological and breeding research.
As ARO looks to the future, they are excited about the opportunities and challenges of utilizing genome editing to direct recombination. This innovative approach could allow them to break the tradeoff between fixation and recombination in dissecting wild introgressions with complex causal variation. Fridman will show that although they make successful strides in this direction, "the road to success is always under construction."
Host: Abelina Fuentes (aafjackson@ucdavis.edu)