Harkamal Walia, associate professor of agronomy and horticulture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has been awarded a $5.78 million National Science Foundation grant to explore the affects of high nighttime temperatures on wheat and rice.
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LINCOLN, Neb. – Harkamal Walia, associate professor of agronomy and horticulture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has been awarded a $5.78 million National Science Foundation grant to explore the affects of high nighttime temperatures on wheat and rice.
The stress of high nighttime temperatures can lead to severe losses in the yield and quality of crops. These losses are particularly high for wheat and rice, two major cereal crops worldwide. During the four-year project, Walia’s team will investigate genes and genetic variants in wheat and rice to identify genetic markers and physiological characteristics tied to heat tolerance.
“The effect of high daytime temperatures on crop resilience has been studied, but this project will give us the opportunity to study the impact of high nighttime temperatures,” said Walia, who received the award from the NSF’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, or EPSCoR. “Models suggest a greater widespread increase in nighttime temperatures than in daytime temperatures, so we need to develop rice and wheat resilient to these conditions.”
Walia will lead a multidisciplinary team of Nebraska researchers, including Gota Morota, assistant professor of animal science; Toshihiro Obata, assistant professor of biochemistry; Hongfeng Yu, assistant professor of computer science and engineering; Chi Zhang, associate professor of biological sciences; and Qi Zhang, assistant professor of statistics. The team will also collaborate with researchers from Arkansas State University and Kansas State University.