Professor Shengbao Xu and his team published an article on wheat root regulation in The Plant Journal

Main Content:
   Bread wheat, one of the keystone crops for global food security, is challenged by climate change and resource shortage.
  The research identified QTrl.Rs-5B modulating seminal root development with a genome-wide association study and validated its genetic effects with two F5 segregation populations. Transcriptome-wide association study prioritized TaFMO1-5B, a gene encoding the flavin-containing monooxygenases, as the causal gene for QTrl.Rs-5B, whose expression levels correlate negatively with the phenotyping variations among our population.
  Our findings identified and demonstrated the effects of QTrl.Rs-5B on seminal root development and illustrated that it is a valuable genetic locus for wheat root improvement.