Session: Phenotypic Plasticity and Genotype by Environment Interaction: Dissection and Prediction

Division: Workshops

Title: Phenotypic Plasticity and Genotype by Environment Interaction: Dissection and Prediction

Lead Community Sponsor:
Cosponsor: C01 Crop Breeding and Genetics, C02 Crop Physiology and Metabolism, C07 Genomics, Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology, ASA Section: Biometry and Statistical Computing
Community Cosponsor: Bioinformatics in Crops and Soils Community, Statistical Education/Training for Researchers Community
Format: Oral None (Admin Only)
Keywords:

Session Description: One of the major challenges in plant breeding is the differential response of genotypes from one environment to another, or phenotypic plasticity. Different phenotypic plasticity across a set of genotypes gives rise to the varied phenotypic values, the variation of which is typically partitioned into genotype, environment, genotype by environment interaction, and residual. Although various methods have been developed, many of these methods lack forecasting capacity and our understanding of genomic and environmental determinants is still limited. We have recently established an integrated analytical framework to answer long-standing questions in phenotypic plasticity and genotype by environment interaction. The essence of this framework is to combine knowledge from physiology, genetics, and statistics to identify the determinants rather than only model fitting. It is about identifying hidden patterns and biological insights to enable the forecasting capacity and profile the gene effect continuum. We hope to significantly enrich our understanding of genes and environmental factors underlying phenotypic plasticity and translate this understanding to application by enabling the in-season, on-target crop performance prediction. In this workshop, we plan to 1) explain the interdependence of genotype and environment and two different origins of this genotype by environment interaction concept to help understand the complexity of phenotypic observation; 2) test an open-source package to facilitate the research community to dissect and model phenotypic variation in flowering time and plant height, two most studied quantitative traits; 3) showcase the analytical method to identify genomic and environmental determinants underlying phenotypic plasticity of a set of agronomically important traits from different types of populations in different crops. Detailed workshop modules have been prepared.