- Professor
- Department of Crop, Soil, and Environmental Sciences
- University Of Arkansas System, Division of Agriculture
- 115 Plant Sciences Building, Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701
- Phone: 479-575-8435
- Fax: (479) 575-7465
- Email: apereira@uark.edu
- Webpages:
- https://plantstress-pereira.uark.edu/Pereira_Group/Home.html
- https://crop-soil-environmental-sciences.uark.edu/people/faculty-directory/uid/apereira/name/Andy+Pereira/
- Research Interests:
- > Drought stress systems biology using the plant models Arabidopsis and rice: Dissect drought response, resistance and water use efficiency pathways using transcriptome analysis and regulatory genes with conserved functions across plants.
- > Gene function network analysis to dissect complex biological pathways, using regulatory genes as genetic perturbations to experimentally validate and improve predicted networks.
- > Reproductive drought stress response and resistance pathways: comparative analysis in the cereals maize and rice.
- > Systems analysis of regulatory pathways of cellulose, lignin and other cell wall components.
- > QTL analysis of physiological parameters for drought tolerance/avoidance in rice.
- > Functional genomics of agronomic traits in rice.
Dr. Andy Pereira is a Professor in the department of Crop, Soil, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He has been a co-investigator or leader of several projects funded by NSF, USDA Arkansas Rice Board in the past, and is also a recipient of the Anheuser-Busch and Arkansas Wholesalers Professorship in Plant Molecular Genetics.
His research has led to identification of genes for crop traits such as male sterility, disease resistance in potato/tomato (Phytophthora) and Arabidopsis, drought tolerance and water use efficiency in rice, and recently focused on heat tolerance in rice (US Patent 61/779,124) to address problems of high night temperature arising due to climate change.
- Research Participants:
- Julie Thomas, Ph.D. (Research Scientist)
- Anuj Kumar, Ph.D. (Crop Geneticist)
- Navdeep Gill, Ph.D. (Research Scientist- Bioinformatics)
- Yheni Dwiningsih, Ph.D. (Program Associate)
- Charles Ruiz (Graduate Student)
- Huda Alshaya Sr. (Graduate Student)
- Ishani Paithankar (Graduate Student)
Role in the project
In this project [NSF- EPSCoR RII Track-2 FEC: Systems Genetics Studies on Rice Genomes for Analysis of Grain Yield and Quality Under Heat Stress (NSF Award # 1826836)], our goal is to analyze the response of rice accessions/cultivars to elevated temperatures, namely High Nighttime Temperature (HNT) as found due to global warming; to genetically dissect the response of the rice genotypes to HNT and identify favorable alleles of genes to improve heat tolerance of rice cultivars. The NSF-funded project has brought together a multidisciplinary team working on diverse aspects of this study. As the Principal Investigator, Dr. Pereira participates in all aspects of the project in coordinating and managing the research and outreach activities.
The Pereira lab at University of Arkansas, Fayetteville works on phenotypic analysis of diverse rice genotypes in response to high nighttime temperature (HNT) at flowering, scoring for HNT responses such as seed-set, grain yield, and chalky grain, followed by identification of favorable loci for grain yield under HNT stress (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2021.712167) by genome wide association studies (GWAS) (figure A). Populations of diverse rice genotypes have been screened to identify favorable alleles that would be useful for breeding and selection of HNT tolerant varieties. Supporting studies are tailored around the analysis of genetic pathways for HNT tolerance using additional genomics and transcriptomics analysis.
Also, seen below in figure are the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images of two cultivars differing in their response to high night temperature under control and HNT stress conditions.
