Mow Me! Red Clover Transcriptomics to Understand Phenotypic Changes Under Different Land Use Scenarios

Red clover (Trifolium pratense) is an important forage crop worldwide and of great agriculture interest. The perennial plant offers several advantages like a high nutritional value and soil improving characteristics, which can improve intake in livestock farming and reduce the need for fertilizer, but its persistence to environmental perturbation is low. In response to grazing/mowing the plant shows a drastic phenotypic plasticity. While the undisturbed plants grow up to 70 cm in height producing mainly a single shoot, the grazed-on plants are dwarf and produce more side shoots and smaller leaves. The knowledge about red clover architecture and its molecular basis under land use scenarios is scarce but could provide a basis for future breeding programs. We present the results of our phenotypic monitoring, including the measurement of a large scale of morphological important traits in many individuals, to describe the temporal changes in plant architecture in response to grazing/mowing. In addition, transcriptome analysis from plants grown on different field sites and treatments has been performed to provide a deeper insight gene expression underlying the observed morphological plasticity. This will allow the identification of candidate genes, for further functional analysis including transgenic approaches. The combination of both approaches will ultimately help to explain the complex molecular mechanism of the red clover’s phenotypic plasticity in response to mowing/grazing. We will present the latest results of our ongoing work.