When: Thursday 12 June | 14:00 – 15:30 BST
International Barley Hub is pleased to announce the next in the 2025 series of seminars: “Advances in Understanding Crown Root Formation in Barley” presented by Nikola Korinkova (PhD Student, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic)
Summary:
Root architecture contributes to the overall resilience and productivity of cereal crops, yet many regulatory pathways remain poorly understood. Our research centers on the initiation and early development of crown roots in barley, a critical process for establishing a robust root system. The seminar will focus on our recent transcriptomic study, which dissected the early molecular responses to auxin and examined how chromatin accessibility shapes gene expression during crown root initiation. We will explore the possible roles of two stress-related transcription factors, HvNAC013 and CBF12C, in this process. Of particular interest was revealing their participation in a regulatory network that integrates auxin signaling with environmental response pathways
Through this work, we aim to advance the understanding of root development in barley and provide new insights for the future identification of novel targets for crop improvement. Optimization of root architecture holds the potential to enhance the plant’s ability to adapt to stress conditions, and thus achieve more sustainable barley production in the face of environmental challenges.
Speakers bio:
Nikola Korinkova is a PhD student in Biochemistry at Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic. She completed her master’s degree in biotechnology and genetic engineering, where her thesis focused on the characterization of barley ARF family, with an emphasis on potential repressors of crown root initiation. In her PhD project, she continued to study auxin signaling in crown root initiation to unravel the gene networks that control crown root development. In her work, she has produced transgenic barley lines for root phenotyping, and utilized next-generation sequencing-based methods. She is also a member of the GeneSprout Initiative.