Gustavo A. Slafer

Universitat de Lleida

Life & Medical Sciences

Gustavo Slafer (PhD, University of Melbourne) is ICREA Research Professor at the University of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain), where he is also Associate Professor (Dept. Crop & Forest Sci.) He is also currently (i) Honorary Professor of the School of Biosciences, University of Nottingham, UK; (ii) Editor of particular sections of Crop Science and Spanish Journal of Agricultural Research, (iii) Handling Editor of Food and Energy Security, (iv) Associate Editor of Euphytica; and (v) member of the Editorial or Advisory Boards of Field Crops Research, European Journal of Agronomy and Agricultural and Food Science. Until Dec. 2018 he has co-edited 6 scientific books, by publishers in USA and UK, and published 40 chapters in international books and more than 170 papers in JCR-journals. His h-index at Dec. 2018 was 52 (WoS-CoreCollection). He has been invited several times to deliver talks in international conferences.


Research interests

I study the mechanisms underlying the responses of grain crops to environmental and genetic factors. My research approach has been always focused at the crop level of organization. The environmental factors include management practices such us irrigation or fertilization (among other less manageable environmental factors including radiation, photoperiod and temperature). Genetic factors include from general breeding strategies to the action of particular genes or groups of genes. The general aim is identifying alternatives to traditional farming and breeding practises to enhance the efficiency of resource use, as an avenue to increase simultaneously both crop productivity and agricultural sustainability.

Selected publications

- Slafer GA & Savin R 2018, 'Can N management affect the magnitude of yield loss due to heat waves in wheat and maize?', Current Opinion In Plant Biology, 45, B, 276 - 283.

- Ochagavia H, Prieto P, Savin R, Griffiths S & Slafer GA  2018, 'Dynamics of leaf and spikelet primordia initiation in wheat as affected by Ppd-1a alleles under field conditions', Journal Of Experimental Botany, 69, 10, 2621 - 2631.

- Prieto P, Ochagavia H, Savin R, Griffiths S & Slafer GA 2018, 'Dynamics of floret initiation/death determining spike fertility in wheat as affected by Ppd genes under field conditions', Journal Of Experimental Botany, 69, 10, 2633 - 2645.

- Ordonez RA, Savin R, Cossani CM & Slafer GA  2018, 'Maize Grain Weight Sensitivity to Source-Sink Manipulations under a Wide Range of Field Conditions', Crop Science, 58, 6, 2542 - 2557.

- Ochagavia H, Prieto P, Savin R, Griffiths S & Slafer GA 2018, 'Earliness per se effects on developmental traits in hexaploid wheat grown under field conditions', European Journal of Agronomy, 99: 214–223.

- Prieto P, Ochagavia H, Savin R, Griffiths S & Slafer GA 2018, 'Physiological determinants of fertile floret survival in wheat as affected by earliness per se genes under field conditions', European Journal of Agronomy, 99: 206–213

- Elia M, Slafer GA & Savin R 2018, 'Yield and grain weight responses to post-anthesis increases in maximum temperature under field grown wheat as modified by nitrogen supply', Field Crops Research, 221, 228 - 237.

- Perez-Gianmarco TI, Slafer GA & Gonzalez FG  2018, 'Wheat pre-anthesis development as affected by photoperiod sensitivity genes (Ppd-1) under contrasting photoperiods', Functional Plant Biology, 45, 6, 645 - 657.