Research Projects

senescence is the final phase of plant development, ensuring overall fitness and reproductive success. In monocarpic plants, flag leaf senescence progresses from older leaves, with nutrients remobilized into the developing grain. Delaying flag leaf senescence may enhance grain yield by maintaining source-sink relationships and nutrient remobilization in cereals. studying flag leaf senescence (FLs) will broaden our knowledge about the fundamental developmental process and lead to devising ways for altering senescence for agronomic applications. Transcriptome studies have shown the involvement of senescence-associated genes (sAGs), which exhibit altered expression patterns during senescence. Heat shock Transcription Factors (HsFs) showed induction by stresses, indicating possible crosstalk between stress and senescence pathways in plants. To explore the role of HsFs in regulating senescence program, comprehensive expression profiling of 25 OsHsFs in three senescence systems was performed in rice. HsFC1b was highly upregulated in all three systems. The research aims to unravel the biological function of HsFC1b, gain insight into regulation of FLs by HsFC1b, identify HsFs that interact with HsFC1b, and generate a transcriptional and protein-protein interaction network of HsFC1b. The significant impacts of this research include exploring the possibility of modulating HsFC1b levels to manipulate FLs in rice and possibly enhance grain yield, understanding the molecular and biological function of HsFC1b in rice, and generating a new senescence pathway(s) in rice.