Organisation - Unimore

UNIMORE - University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (www.unimore.it) is an Italian public University with a longstanding tradition, founded in 1175. Located in one of Europe's wealthiest and most dynamic regions, the Region Emilia-Romagna, UNIMORE is based in the two nearby cities of Modena and Reggio Emilia. The university ranked among the top 8 universities in Italy for its level of research, according to the most recent assessment of the Italian Ministerial Committee for the Evaluation of Research (CIVR). It is composed of 14 Departments, offering a wide range of degree programs at the undergraduate level, right up to doctoral studies in most disciplinary areas, from the humanities and social sciences to engineering and technology, and from physical and natural sciences to medicine and life sciences. UNIMORE, which has just over 19,000 students including 3,500 postgraduates, is large enough to offer all the facilities one would expect from a major university but small enough to retain a personal and friendly learning environment. It offers state-of-the-art facilities with internationally sponsored research activities and with the two Technopoles of Modena and Reggio Emilia; UNIMORE is in fact part of the High Technology Regional Network (HTN).

The Crop Production Group (www.cropsci.unimore.it) based at the Department of Life Sciences of UNIMORE (www.dsv.unimore.it) was established in 2005 by Nicola Pecchioni. The Group is now composed of a group leader (prof. N. Pecchioni), one researcher (dr. E. Francia), one technician (dr. J.A. Milc), two postdocs, two PhD students and one foreign fellow. It primarily conducts research on both crop and model plants to improve their productivity and end-use quality. Since 2008 it has given a substantial contribution to the Interdepartmental Centre for Genomic Research (www.cgr.unimore.it) of UNIMORE. Other than NGS facilities of CGR, the group has an experimental field in Gattatico (Reggio Emilia) for phenotyping and yield trials. Genomic research of the group is focused on the biological mechanisms limiting crop production under biotic and abiotic stress conditions. Barley (Hordeum vulgare) is main target species.

Barley Genetics and Genomics

From the beginning of its scientific activity, the group studied barley under abiotic stress (cold and drought) condition as well as the genomics of barley adaptation to Mediterranean environments. The development of a Nure x Tremois (NT) population, conceived as idea in late 90's for QTL mapping has been unexpectedly fruitful. We firstly described the Fr-H1+Fr-H2 2-loci system of resistance to frost in barley (2004), and we firstly in barley indicated the CBF genes as candidates of Fr-H2 (2004 and 2007). In collaboration with CRA-GPG we have developed a barley genetic map with more than 500 markers (2014). We independently developed other Nure-derived genetic materials such as large segregating populations and QTL-NILs. Other (few) QTLs for frost tolerance have been added through a GWAS approach (2013). As regards the study of barley yield adaptation to the environment, In collaboration with the barley scientific communit we contributed with the NT population to the discovery of barley "Vrn" vernalization genes (2005), and to the discovery of barley powdery mildew resistance meta-QTLs (2010). It was demonstrated and quantified by us how vernalization+flowering time genes are determinants of barley grain yield in Mediterranean environments (2011 and 2013). In 2012, the group also contributed to the cloning of the EPS2 QTL responsible of earliness per se, as one of major drivers of yield adaptation of spring and winter barleys in Europe.

The current research interests are the elucidation of the genetic and molecular bases of grain yield and tolerance to low temperature and drought. The construction of an integrated physical-genetic map of a region of barley chromosome 5H that harbour a major QTL of frost resistance (Fr-H2) and a CBF-gene cluster is one of the main recent achievements. Massive parallel de novo sequencing allowed structural and functional characterization of the locus. The research is complemented by expression studies of the CRT/DRE (CBF) binding factors gene family, residing at Fr-H2, as well as of their putative regulators.

Barley Genome Net - Organisation - Unimore

barley

breeding

transient gene silencing