Location: Plant Stress and Germplasm Development Research
Project Number: 3096-21000-023-010-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 15, 2025
End Date: Aug 14, 2026
Objective:
1. Using the framework of landscape genomics and plant physiology, the proposed research will mine a panel of National Cotton Germplasm Collection (NCGC) landraces composed of 384 accessions for new sources of variation that can be used to enhance the adaptability of cotton to limiting environments.
2. Identify landscape agro-physiological traits that could be combined with genotype data to identify genetic variants that are strongly associated with specific environmental conditions in a geo-referenced population.
Approach:
This project will examine primitive cotton landrace resources for early season suboptimal temperatures tolerance, drought tolerance, and tolerance to thrips, to identify and improve our understanding of agronomic and physiological drivers of low temperature tolerance. The project we will conduct fields trials for a range of planting dates and water treatments, and controlled environment studies with a range of growth conditions. Project will evaluate primitive landrace collection for physiological, morphological, and agronomic traits related to cold, drought, thrips tolerance and assess the penalties on quantitative and qualitative yield traits. Successful identification of new sources of abiotic and biotic will establish the breeding value of the landrace panel for adaptability to marginal environments towards the enhanced identification and utilization of accessions in breeding for climate-resiliency in cotton.