A key to maintaining and improving Canada’s position as leaders in grain production lies in crop improvement, a field of research that increasingly uses genomic approaches to identify genetic factors involved in the climatic adaptation of particular crops. The project will focus on three economically important crops – wheat, barley, and rye. Drawing on extensive genetic data and tools within the wheat and barley species and close relatives, the research team will seek to better understand the low-temperature responses of these crops. Rye is the most low-temperature tolerant winter cereal and provides a natural candidate for gene identification, characterization, and exploitation. The immediate goal of the project is to learn from the low-temperature adaptation of hardy species like rye in order to reduce the production risks of more commercially important crops like wheat and barley.