What decides when a chickpea flowers, when a male asparagus plant will produce an all-male offspring, and how a chestnut survives drought.
My work sits at an intersection between the code (DNA and bioinformatics) and the field: identifying genes and variants that control agronomic traits in chickpea and asparagus, and drought tolerance in European chestnut, validating them with rigorous gene-expression and genomic methods, and turning that knowledge into tools breeders and forest managers can actually use.
Three threads, one question
From genome to field: using genomic tools and bioinformatics to identify the genes behind agronomic traits, and turn that knowledge into better-adapted crops.
Flowering time in chickpea
Mapping how individual genetic variants combine to control adaptation to agro-climatic conditions, using recombinant inbred lines and near-isogenic line pairs to pinpoint candidate genes such as ELF3, MED16 and STO/BBX24.
QTL for yield-related traits in asparagus
Genotyped and field-phenotyped cross populations, including a unique collection of male polyploid genotypes, allowing us to pinpoint the candidate genes RGP1 and TGA10 explaining yield differences.
Drought tolerance in Castanea sativa
Extending the same genomic toolkit beyond chickpea to European chestnut, building a drought-tolerance gene atlas by leveraging the close homology between Quercus and Castanea genomes — helping Mediterranean chestnut forests adapt to climate change.
MIQE-compliant qPCR
Designing gene-expression experiments that meet MIQE guidelines and assessing RNA quality rigorously, so results stay reproducible and comparable across labs and studies.
From gene discovery to breeding tools
Functional KASP markers for flowering-time selection
Working across four recombinant inbred line populations derived from intra- and interspecific crosses, this project maps the genetic basis of flowering time and translates the strongest candidate variants into KASP markers — a genotyping format breeders can run directly on their own material, without needing to re-run the underlying genetics.
One marker linked to HisIE stands out for its discriminatory power, reinforcing its role as a key contributor to flowering-time variation and giving breeding programs a practical tool for developing chickpea varieties adapted to specific environments.
Building the toolkit
Methodological and genome-scale studies underpinning the chickpea, asparagus, and chestnut work above.
Decoding drought tolerance from a genomic approach in Castanea sativa Mill
Built a drought-tolerance gene atlas for European chestnut using public databases and Quercus–Castanea genome homology, addressing the lack of a chestnut reference genome.
Phenotypic and genetic characterization of a near-isogenic line pair: insights into flowering time in chickpea
Develops and resequences a near-isogenic line pair with contrasting flowering times, identifying candidate variants in ELF3 and, for the first time in chickpea, MED16 and STO/BBX24.
QTL Analysis of Morpho-Agronomic Traits in Garden Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis L.)
Maps quantitative trait loci for morphological and agronomic traits in garden asparagus, laying the groundwork for the yield-related QTL work above.
Genome-wide identification of the auxin response factor gene family in Cicer arietinum
Characterized 24 ARF genes in the chickpea reference genome and their evolutionary relationship to Medicago and Arabidopsis.
RNA quality assessment: a view from plant qPCR studies
A review on RNA quality control practices in plant gene-expression research, grounded in MIQE guidelines.
Selection of reference genes for expression studies in Cicer arietinum L.
Identified stable reference genes for qPCR normalization, applied to cyp81E3 expression during pathogen response to Ascochyta rabiei.
Characterization of the 3′:5′ ratio for reliable determination of RNA quality
Proposes the 3′:5′ integrity ratio as a practical, reliable metric for assessing RNA quality ahead of qPCR analysis.
Molecular Plant Breeding, Universidad de Córdoba
This research is carried out within the Molecular Plant Breeding group, alongside regular collaborators on chickpea, asparagus and chestnut genetics.