Understanding the Heading Date Plasticity in Winter Wheat by Integrating Genomics, Environment, and Development 

Bing Wang, Visiting Scientist 

Time: 3:00 – 3:30 

Bingxin Wang has been a visiting scientist in the Department of Agronomy at Iowa State University under the supervision of Dr. Jianming Yu since 2024. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Agronomy from Shandong Agricultural University and his Ph.D. in Crop Science from Northwest A&F University in 2022. Subsequently, he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the College of Agronomy at Northwest A&F University, where he specialized in Crop Breeding. 

Abstract 

Heading date (HD) in winter wheat exhibits varied responses of genotypes to distinct environments, or phenotypic plasticity. Understanding the underlying patterns is highly desirable for complex trait dissection and prediction. HD was obtained across 15 natural field environments for a set of winter wheat accessions. Heading Date 1 (HD1), the duration from the projected start of winter dormancy to heading, was then derived as an additional trait. Our analysis showed that phenotypic variations in HD and HD1 were primarily driven by two overlapping day-length windows. With the identified environmental indices, reaction-norm parameters (intercept and slope) were obtained for trait dissection and performance prediction. Additional experiments across 48 environments provided empirical validation for the accurate HD prediction, which was further improved by combining winter dormancy and HD1 prediction. These findings enriched our understanding of heading-date phenotypic plasticity by integrating the environment and development aspects, facilitating the prediction-guided breeding of crops. 

CERIS-JGRA Hands-on Practice 

Jiawen Lu, Postdoc Research Associate 

Time: 3:30 – 5:00 

Abstract: Phenotypic plasticity is the property of a given genotype to produce different phenotypes in response to distinct environmental conditions. The framework of Critical Environmental Regressor through Informed Search-Joint Genomic Regression Analysis (CERIS-JGRA) enables the identification of the major environmental driver and reinstates it to trait dissection and prediction. This talk will provide a step-by-step introduction to the CERIS-JGRA workflow, using flowering time in a sorghum population as a case study. Codes and example data are available at https://github.com/jmyu/CERIS-JGRA-Workshop. 

Note: Please bring a laptop with R and R Studio installed. 

Jiawen Lu is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Agronomy at Iowa State University, working in Prof. Jianming Yu’s lab. She obtained her Ph.D. from Chin Agricultural University in 2024 and worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Northwestern University from March 2024 to January 2025. Her current research aims to investigate the genetic basis of complex traits of maize and other staple crops and to translate these insights into practical breeding, by integrating knowledge of quantitative genetics, genomics and technologies of multi-omics.