Dr. Philip W Becraft

My research interests center on the regulation of plant growth and development. One major project focuses on maize endosperm development, which is an attractive system because of the endosperm’s importance to world food and industry, and because of its amenability to genetic analysis. Using molecular genetics and genomics, we have established that a genetic hierarchy regulates aleurone development and isolated several of the key genes. We are also interested in the regulation of biomass yield and are studying genes involved in the hormonal regulation of growth as well as identifying genes that promote  biomass production by studying mutants that cause a dwarf phenotype.