Juan Arbelaez

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | UIUC · Department of Crop Sciences

Rice genetic improvement is a key component of achieving and maintaining food security in Asia and Africa in the face of growing populations and climate change. In this effort, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) continues to play a critical role in creating and disseminating rice varieties with higher productivity. Due to increasing d...

Rice (Oryza sativa L.)grain quality is a set of complex interrelated traits that include grain milling, appearance, cooking, and edible properties. As consumer preferences in Latin America and the Caribbean evolve, determining what traits best capture regional grain quality preferences is fundamental for breeding and cultivar release. In this study...

Basmati rice is favoured for its grain type and aroma, but its production is vulnerable due to climate change and freshwater accessibility. Discovery and refinement of genomic regions conferring drought tolerance are needed to develop new drought tolerant Basmati varieties. Using Recombinant Inbred Lines (RILs) derived from a cross between drought-...

Rice genetic improvement is a key component of achieving and maintaining food security in Asia and Africa in the face of growing populations and climate change. In this effort, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) continues to play a critical role in creating and disseminating rice varieties with higher productivity. Due to increasing d...

Understanding the genetics of field-based tolerance to high iron-associated (HIA) stress in rice can accelerate the development of new varieties with enhanced yield performance in West African lowland ecosystems. To date, few field-based studies have been undertaken to rigorously evaluate rice yield performance under HIA stress conditions. In this...

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is more sensitive to drought stress than other cereals. To dissect molecular mechanisms underlying drought-tolerant yield in rice, we applied differential expression and co-expression network approaches to transcriptomes from flag-leaf and emerging panicle tissues of a drought-tolerant yield introgression line, DTY-IL, and th...

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are highly abundant, amendable to high-throughput genotyping, and useful for a number of breeding and genetics applications in crops. SNP frequencies vary depending on the species and populations under study, and therefore target SNPs need to be carefully selected to be informative for each application. While...

Background: While a multitude of genotyping platforms have been developed for rice, the majority of them have not been optimized for breeding where cost, turnaround time, throughput and ease of use, relative to density and informativeness are critical parameters of their utility. With that in mind we report the development of the 1K-Rice Custom Am...

Background: Integrated breeding approaches such as combining marker-assisted selection and rapid line fixation through single-seed-descent, can effectively increase the frequency of desirable alleles in a breeding program and increase the rate of genetic gain for quantitative traits by shortening the breeding cycle. However, with most genotyping b...

Key message The integration of new technologies into public plant breeding programs can make a powerful step change in agricultural productivity when aligned with principles of quantitative and Mendelian genetics. Abstract The breeder’s equation is the foundational application of quantitative genetics to crop improvement. Guided by the variables t...

Transcription factors (TFs) regulate the expression of other genes to indirectly mediate stress resistance mechanisms. Therefore, when studying TF-mediated stress resistance, it is important to understand how TFs interact with genes in the genetic background. Here, we fine-mapped the aluminum (Al) resistance QTL Alt12.1 to a 44-kb region containing...

Transcription factors (TFs) mediate stress resistance indirectly via physiological mechanisms driven by the genes they regulate. When studying TF-mediated stress resistance, it is important to understand how TFs interact with different genetic backgrounds. Here, we fine-mapped the aluminum (Al) resistance QTL Alt12.1 to a 44 Kb region containing si...

Improved root system architecture can enhance agronomic performance by increasing water and nitrogen (N) acquisition efficiency. However, little is known about interaction between root system architecture and agronomic performance under field environments. To gain a better understanding about the genetic basis of these relationships, we evaluated a...

Two populations of interspecific introgression lines (ILs) in a common recurrent parent were developed for use in pre-breeding and QTL mapping. The ILs were derived from crosses between cv Curinga, a tropical japonica upland cultivar, and two different wild donors, Oryza meridionalis Ng. accession (W2112) and Oryza rufipogon Griff. accession (IRGC...

In rice, seminal root elongation plays an important role in acquisition of nutrients such as N and P, but the extent to which different N forms and P concentrations affect root growth is poorly understood. This study aimed to examine N- and P-mediated seminal root elongation response and to identify putative QTLs associated with seminal root elonga...

To facilitate the creation of easily comparable, low-resolution genetic maps with evenly distributed markers in rice (Oryza sativa L.), we conceived of and developed a Universal Core Genetic Map (UCGM). With this aim, we derived a set of 165 anchors, representing clusters of three microsatellite or simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers arranged into...

To facilitate mapping, characterization, and utilization of quantitative trait loci from wild relatives of rice, we developed two interspecific populations of chromosome segment substitution lines (CSSLs). Each population was derived from a cross between the recurrent parent “Curinga”, an elite tropical japonica cultivar, and an accession of Oryza...