The effect of FLOWERING LOCUS T1 (FT1) on the barley transcriptome

An RNA-sequencing experiment was performed to test how the central flowering time gene FLOWERING LOCUS T1 (FT1) affects gene expression in barley (Hordeum vulgare).
Spring cultivar Golden Promise (GP, carrying a mutated ppd-H1 allele) and its derived introgression line GP fast (wild-type Ppd H1 introgressed into GP from Igri, Gol et al., 2021) were transformed with a CRISPR-Cas9 construct to create plants with a nonfunctional FT1 (HORVU.MOREX.r3.7HG0653910) gene. The wildtypes and the three resulting ft1 KO mutants (ft1.1 and ft1.2 in GP-fast background and ft1.3 in GP background) were cultivated in controlled, flowering-inducing (long-day, 16h of light) growth conditions. Plants were sampled at three developmental stages (onset of spikelet initiation, W2.0; onset of floral development, W3.5; stop of spikelet induction, W5.0; Waddington et al., 1983). Leaf and developing shoot apex (MSA) tissue was sampled to detect changes in gene expression in vegetative and reproductive tissues.