Katarzyna Glowacka

University of Nebraska at Lincoln | NU · Department of Biochemistry

Phenotypic and genomic diversity in Arabidopsis thaliana may be associated with adaptation along its wide elevational range, but it is unclear whether elevational clines are consistent among different mountain ranges. We took a multi‐regional view of selection associated with elevation. In a diverse panel of ecotypes, we measured plant traits under...

Photosynthetic organisms must cope with rapid fluctuations in light intensity. Nonphotochemical quenching (NPQ) enables the dissipation of excess light energy as heat under high light conditions, whereas its relaxation under low light maximizes photosynthetic productivity. We quantified variation in NPQ kinetics across a large sorghum ( Sorghum bic...

For crop production, the water supply limitations will likely become a bigger restriction underlining a need for crops that use less water per mass of production. Therefore, water use efficiency becomes a constraint in obtaining resilient and productive crops. We hypothesized that under drought conditions via modulation of chloroplast signal for st...

Non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) protects plants from photodamage caused by excess light energy. The mechanism of NPQ appears to be conserved across flowering plants. However, substantial variation in NPQ has been reported within different genotypes of the same species grown under the environmental conditions. Individual maize genotypes from a div...

Photosynthetic organisms must cope with rapid fluctuations in light intensity. Nonphotochemical quenching (NPQ) enables the dissipation of excess light energy as heat under high light conditions, whereas its relaxation under low light maximizes photosynthetic productivity. We quantified variation in NPQ kinetics across a large sorghum (Sorghum bico...

Improving photosynthetic efficiency has recently emerged as a promising way to increase crop production in a sustainable manner. While chloroplast size may affect photosynthetic efficiency in several ways, we aimed to explore whether chloroplast size manipulation can be a viable approach to improving photosynthetic performance. Several tobacco (Nic...

Photoprotection against excess light via nonphotochemical quenching (NPQ) is indispensable for plant survival. However, slow NPQ relaxation under low light conditions can decrease yield of field‐grown crops up to 40%. Using semi‐high‐throughput assay, we quantified the kinetics of NPQ and photosystem II operating efficiency (ΦPSII) in a replicated...

Plant growth and resilience require balancing an inherently oxidative metabolism with powerful antioxidant systems that help maintain homeostasis. When the environment changes, reactive oxygen species are potent indicators of that change, allowing adaptation through re-balancing metabolism and antioxidant systems. A large body of evidence supports...

Water deficit currently acts as one of the largest limiting factors for agricultural productivity worldwide. Additionally, limitation by water scarcity is projected to continue in the future with the further onset of effects of global climate change. As a result, it is critical to develop or breed for crops that have increased water-use efficiency...

Arabidopsis thaliana has a wide elevational range and much of its diversity may be associated with local adaptation to elevation. We took a multi-regional view of the genomics and physiology of elevational adaptation in Arabidopsis, with >200 ecotypes, including 17 newly collected from Africa. We measured plant responses to potential high elevation...

Little is known about the interactive effects of exogenous nitric oxide (NO) and abscisic acid (ABA) on nitrogen (N) metabolism and related changes at molecular and biochemical levels under drought stress. The present study highlights the independent and combined effect of NO and ABA (grouped as “nitrate agonists”) on expression profiles of represe...

Miscanthus is a perennial wild grass that is of global importance for paper production, roofing, horticultural plantings, and an emerging highly productive temperate biomass crop. We report a chromosome-scale assembly of the paleotetraploid M. sinensis genome, providing a resource for Miscanthus that links its chromosomes to the related diploid Sor...

Miscanthus is a perennial grass with potential for lignocellulosic ethanol production. To ensure its utility for this purpose, breeding efforts should focus on increasing genetic diversity of the nothospecies Miscanthus × giganteus (M×g) beyond the single clone used in many programs. Germplasm from the corresponding parental species M. sinensis (Ms...

Miscanthus is a perennial wild grass that is of global importance for paper production, roofing, horticultural plantings, and an emerging highly productive temperate biomass crop. We report a chromosome-scale assembly of the paleotetraploid M. sinensis genome, providing a resource for Miscanthus that links its chromosomes to the related diploid Sor...

Improving photosynthetic efficiency is widely regarded as a major route to achieving much-needed yield gains in crop plants. In plants with C3 photosynthesis, increasing the diffusion conductance for CO2 transfer from substomatal cavity to chloroplast stroma (gm) could help to improve the efficiencies of CO2 assimilation and photosynthetic water us...

Prediction of stomatal conductance is a key element to relate and scale up leaf-level gas exchange processes to canopy, ecosystem and land surface models. The empirical models that are typically employed for this purpose are simple and elegant formulations which relate stomatal conductance on a leaf area basis to the net rate of CO2 assimilation, h...

To improve the efficiency of breeding of Miscanthus for biomass yield, there is a need to develop genomics‐assisted selection for this long‐lived perennial crop by relating genotype to phenotype and breeding value across a broad range of environments. We present the first genome‐wide association (GWA) and genomic prediction study of Miscanthus that...

Overwintering ability is an important selection criterion for Miscanthus breeding in temperate regions. Insufficient overwintering ability of the currently leading Miscanthus biomass cultivar, M. ×giganteus (M×g) ‘1993‐1780’, in regions where average annual minimum temperatures are ‐26.1 °C (USDA hardiness zone 5) or lower poses a pressing need to...

To breed improved biomass cultivars of Miscanthus ×giganteus, it will be necessary to select the highest‐yielding and best‐adapted genotypes of its parental species, M. sinensis and M. sacchariflorus. We phenotyped a diverse clonally‐propagated panel of 569 M. sinensis and nine natural diploid M. ×giganteus at one subtropical (Zhuji, China) and fiv...

The aim of this work is to engineer energycane and Miscanthus to produce an abundance of natural oil that can be converted into biodiesel, biojet fuel, and bioproducts. Abstract: The Miscanthus x giganteus has proved a highly productive and cold tolerant C4 biomass feedstock. As a sterile interspecific hybrid, it lacks genetic variation. Bioenginee...

Insufficient water availability for crop production is a mounting barrier to achieving the 70% increase in food production that will be needed by 2050. One solution is to develop crops that require less water per unit mass of production. Water vapor transpires from leaves through stomata, which also facilitate the influx of CO2during photosynthetic...

Spring drought can adversely affect the productivity of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) by reducing the yield. Because seed osmopriming can enhance crop productivity, we examined the potential of CaCl2 treatment to improve drought tolerance in spring barley. Initially, we applied the priming procedure (5, 50, and 500 mM) to caryopses and assessed its e...

Faster light adaptation improves productivity Crop plants protect themselves from excess sunlight by dissipating some light energy as heat, readjusting their systems when shadier conditions prevail. But the photosynthetic systems do not adapt to fluctuating light conditions as rapidly as a cloud passes overhead, resulting in suboptimal photosynthet...

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Stable transformation of plants is a powerful tool for hypothesis testing. A rapid and reliable evaluation method of the transgenic allele for copy number and homozygosity is vital in analyzing these transformations. Here the suitability of Southern blot analysis, thermal asymmetric interlaced (TAIL-)PCR, quantitative (q)PCR and digital droplet (dd...

sThe goal of this study was to investigate if chilling tolerance of C4 photosynthesis in Miscanthus can be transferred to sugarcane by hybridization. Net leaf CO2 uptake (Asat) and the maximum operating efficiency of photosystem II (ФPSII) were measured in warm conditions (25 °C/20 °C), and then during and following a chilling treatment of 10 °C/5...

A clone of the hybrid perennial C4 grass Miscanthus × giganteus (Mxg) is known for achieving exceptionally high rates of leaf CO2 uptake during chilling. This is a requisite of success in the early spring, as is the ability of the leaves to survive occasional frosts. The aim of this study was to search for genotypes with greater potential than Mxg...

The goal of this study was to identify cold-tolerant genotypes within two species of Miscanthus related to the exceptionally chilling-tolerant C4 biomass crop accession: M. ×giganteus ‘Illinois’ (Mxg) as well as in other Mxg genotypes. The ratio of leaf elongation at 10 °C/5 °C to that at 25 °C/25 °C was used to identify initially the 13 most promi...

Changes in physiological parameters (relative water content (RWC), biomass, water use efficiency (WUE), net photosynthetic yield (PN) and quantum yield of PSII (Fv/Fm)), in proline and sugar content, and expression profile of genes reported to be associated with the barley response to water deficit, including LEA genes, NHX1, Hsdr4, BLT101 and gene...

Background and Aims Miscanthus is a perennial C4 grass that is a leading potential feedstock crop for the emerging bioenergy industry in North America, Europe and China. However, only a single, sterile genotype of M. × giganteus (M×g), a nothospecies derived from diploid M. sinensis (Msi) and tetraploid M. sacchariflorus (Msa), is currently availab...

Miscanthus ×giganteus (Mxg) is an important bioenergy feedstock crop, however genetic diversity among legacy cultivars may be severely constrained. Only one introduction from Japan to Denmark of this sterile, triploid, vegetatively propagated crop was recorded in the 1930's. We sought to determine if the Mxg cultivars in North America were all syno...

The influence of gas exchange parameters on yields of six Miscanthus clones were evaluated in two locations over three years. Five out of six genotypes had significant increases in the photosynthetic rate and intrinsic water use efficiency between the third and first or third and second years, while intercellular CO2 concentration and stomatal cond...

Miscanthus ×giganteus (Mxg) is a high-biomass producing perennial grass that is a hybrid between M. sinensis (Msi) and M. sacchariflorus (Msa). Numerous clones of sterile triploid Mxg have been named in Europe and North America, but it is unclear how much genetic diversity is present among them. Mxg was introduced to Denmark from Japan in 1935 and...

Miscanthus spp. is a valuable energy grass with a high biomass production, making it a natural source for first- and second-generation fuels. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to investigate a methodology for the haploid production of diploid Miscanthus sinensis Andersson by anther culture. In three experiments the effect of genotype, induction...

Miscanthus (subtribe Saccharinae, tribe Andropogoneae, family Poaceae) is a genus of temperate perennial C4 grasses whose high biomass production makes it, along with its close relatives sugarcane and sorghum, attractive as a biofuel feedstock. The base chromosome number of Miscanthus (x = 19) is different from that of other Saccharinae and approxi...

Table S3. GoldenGate OPA containing the probe details for every marker, as provided by Illumina.

Figure S2. Different amplicon profiles seen in the fragment analysis of SSR markers. The length of the amplicon, in bp, is shown on the horizontal axis and the fluorescence intensity on the vertical axis. Several profiles show "stutter peaks" that are associated with a main peak. These are not counted as distinct marker states.

Table S5. Markers listed in the order of occurrence on the combined maximum likelihood linkage map, with linkage group and map position in cM.

Figure S5. Linearity of genetic maps for Sorghum bicolor and Miscanthus sinensis. Markers with unique placement in sorghum were assigned map positions by interpolation relative to the map of Mace et al. 2009 [30].

Table S1. Phenotypes of the M.sinensis 'Grosse Fontaine' and M.sinensis 'Undine' parents, as measured in mature plants grown in the greenhouse (Figure 1 panels C).

Fasta file of the M.sinensis RNAseq assembly.

Figure S6. Sequence alignment of two independent regions of Miscanthus PPDK paralogs 1 and 2 illustrating indels and SNV used as molecular markers to place C4-PPDK on the linkage map. A) 129 base pairs of sequence from PPDK paralog 1. The G/A single nucleotide polymorphism was converted into the CAPS marker, EBI 847. B) 129 base pairs of PPDK paral...

Table S4. File containing the primer details for all the SSRs.

Table S2. RNA sequencing and assembly data table.

Figure S1. Distribution of sorghum gene models (top stripe, green), Grosse Fontaine and Undine RNAseq reads (middle stripe, depth in log scale Blue-Orange-Green), and genotyped SNVs (bottom stripe, red) along the ten Sorghum bicolor chromosomes. Each chromosome shown to scale (length in Mb shown to left).

Table S7. Details of revised linkage groups 16 and 17 including two C4-PPDK markers.

Figure S3. Colinearity dot plots of the two mapping methods, maximum likelihood and regression (Kosambi).

Figure S4. Colinearity dot plots of the Grosse Fontaine maps versus the Undine maps made using the maximum likelihood (top) and regression algorithms (bottom).

Table S6. Genotype scores and marker statistics including segregation distortion for markers and mapping statistics for the integrated map shown in Figure 3.

This study presents the results of investigations of variation, genotype × year interactions and genotype × year × location interactions for the yield and morphological traits of several selected clones of energy grasses of the genus Miscanthus. The analyses were performed on the best clones of selected hybrid plants, which were obtained within the...

Grasses from the genus Miscanthus are becoming a key renewable raw material for energy production. The aim of this study was to find a suitable treatment combination that would effectively induce polyploids using in vitro shoots propagated from Miscanthus grass species. The experiments had a three-factorial arrangement (genotype, colchicine concent...

Several grass species of the genus Miscanthus are considered to be outstanding candidates for a sustainable production of biomass to generate renewable energy. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of genotype, the developmental stage of the explant donor inflorescence and the induction medium on the success rate of micropropagat...

Grasses from the genus Miscanthus have several characteristics that make them very favourable crops for efficient, low input, multifunctional and environmentally friendly biomass production. This study is aimed to improve a polyploidisation method to effectively induce polyploids in Miscanthus sinensis and Miscanthus x giganteus. Colchicine was app...

Miscanthus sinensis is a promising species for biomass production. Influences of genetic and nongenetic factors on androgenesis induction efficiency were investigated. This is the first report on successful induction of pollen-derived callus in M. sinensis. The callus yield was strongly affected by genotype. A beneficial influence of cold pretreatm...

The purpose of this study was to find a suitable treatment combination that would effectively induce polyploids in the grass species from the genus Miscanthus. In the experiments, the combinations of two concentrations of colchicine, three options of supplementing the colchicine solution with additional substances and three exposure times were test...

The study presents the results of genetic analysis of selected morphological and physical stem characteristics determining lodging resistance in doubled haploid (DH) lines of spring barley produced from F1 hybrids of the six-rowed variety Klimek with the two-rowed variety Maresi. The DH lines, the initial forms, and F1 and F2 hybrids were tested in...