Ravi Mural

Ravi V. Mural is a Research Assistant Professor affiliated with the Schnable Lab within the Center for Plant Science Innovation. Ravi joined the lab as a postdoc in 2019 after completing his PhD working in soybean breeding. He leads our collaboration with the Hanseup Lab at the University of Utah working on field deployable microsensors. In addition, Ravi is working to study pleiotropy and genotype by environment interactions by mining data from widely used association populations.

Primary Projects

Using Multi-Environment Multi-Trait GWAS to Disambiguate Pleiotropic Relationships in Maize and Sorghum.
Dissecting Genetic Architecture of Various Quantitative Traits Including Plasticity Across Environments.
Cross Environment Predictions of Quantitative Traits Using Genomic and Phenomic Prediction Models.

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In the News

January 14, 2026 PAG Lab Reunion
Hit a new record for the number of lab alumni attended: L→R Sunil K. Kenchanmane Raju (now of UC Riverside), James Schnable, Zhikai Liang (now of NDSU), Ravi Mural (now of SDSU), and Vla Torres-Rodriguez (news coming soon).
November 10, 2024 Distinguished Lecture at SDSU
Prof. Schnable delivered the Distinguished Lecture in Precision Agriculture at South Dakota State University (SDSU), hosted by recent lab alum and new SDSU Professor Ravi Mural. His talk was titled “How New Tools Are Shaping the Ways We Understand Both Genomes and Field Trials.”

Recent Publications

Mathivanan RK, Pedersen C, Turkus J, Shrestha N, Ali W, Torres-Rodriguez JV, Mural RV, Obata T, Schnable JC (2025) Transcripts and genomic intervals associated with variation in metabolite abundance in maize leaves under field conditions. BMC Genomics doi: 10.1186/s12864-025-11580-3 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2024.08.26.609532
Shrestha N, Mangal H, Torres-Rodriguez JV, Tross MC, Lopez-Corona L, Linders K, Sun G, Mural RV, Schnable JC (2025) Off-the-shelf image analysis models outperform human visual assessment in identifying genes controlling seed color variation in sorghum. The Plant Phenome Journal doi: 10.1002/ppj2.70013 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2024.07.22.604683
Wei J, Guo T, Mu Q, Alladassi M, Mural RV, Boyles RE, Hoffman L, Hayes CM, Sigmon B, Thompson AM, Salas-Fernandez M, Rooney WL, Kresovich S, Schnable JC, Li X, Yu J (2024) Genetic and environmental patterns underlying phenotypic plasticity in flowering time and plant height in sorghum. Plant, Cell and Environment doi: 10.1111/pce.15213
Delen Y, Mural RV, Xu G, Delen SP, Schnable JC, Dweikat I, Yang J (2024) Dissecting the genetic architecture of sunflower disc diameter using genome-wide association study. Plant Direct doi: 10.1002/pld3.70010
Sahay S, Shrestha N, Moura Dias H, Mural RV, Grzybowski M, Schnable JC, Glowacka K (2024) Nonphotochemical quenching kinetics GWAS in sorghum identifies genes that may play conserved roles in maize and Arabidopsis thaliana photoprotection. The Plant Journal doi: 10.1111/tpj.16967 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2023.08.29.555201
Korth N, Yang Q, Van Haute MJ, Tross MC, Peng B, Shrestha N, Zwiener M, Mural RV, Schnable JC, Benson AK (2024) Genomic co-localization of variation affecting agronomic and human gut microbiome traits in a meta-analysis of diverse sorghum. doi: 10.1093/g3journal/jkae145 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2023.09.20.558616
Torres-Rodriguez JV, Li D, Turkus J, Newton L, Davis J, Lopez-Corona L, Ali W, Sun G, Mural RV, Grzybowski M, Zamft B, Thompson AM, Schnable JC (2024) Population level gene expression can repeatedly link genes to functions in maize. The Plant Journal doi: 10.1101/2023.10.31.565032 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2023.10.31.565032
Noh M, Sium F, Tope S, Khan S, Karkhanis M, Wang L, Deshpande A, Dalapati R, Mural RV, Mastrangelo C, Zang L, Ji M, Schnable JC, Kim H (2023) Localization of crop damage utilizing a wake up gas sensor network. Transducers 2023
Grzybowski M, Mural RV, Xu G, Turkus J, Yang J, Schnable JC (2023) A common resequencing-based genetic marker dataset for global maize diversity. The Plant Journal doi: 10.1111/tpj.16123
Khan SH, Karkhanis M, Hatasaka B, Tope S, Noh S, Dalapati R, Bulbul A, Mural RV, Banerjee A, Kim KH, Schnable JC, Ji M, Mastrangelo CH, Zang L, Kim H (2022) Field deployment of a nanogap gas sensor for crop damage detection. MEMS 2022 doi: 10.1109/MEMS51670.2022.9699614
Khound R, Sun G, Mural RV, Schnable JC, Santra D (2022) SNP Discovery in Proso millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) using low-pass genome sequencing. Plant Direct doi: 10.1002/pld3.447
Mural RV, Schnable JC (2022) Can the grains offer each other helping hands? Convergent molecular mechanisms associated with domestication and crop improvement in rice and maize. Molecular Plant doi: 10.1016/j.molp.2022.04.003
Mural RV, Sun G, Grzybowski M, Tross MC, Jin H, Smith C, Newton L, Andorf CM, Woodhouse MR, Thompson AM, Sigmon B, Schnable JC (2022) Association mapping across a multitude of traits collected in diverse environments identifies pleiotropic loci in maize. Gigascience doi: 10.1093/gigascience/giac080 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2022.02.25.480753
Khan SH, Tope S, Dalpati R, Kim KH, Noh S, Bulbul A, Mural RV, Banerjee A, Schnable JC, Ji M, Mastrangelo C, Zang L, Kim H “ (2021) Development of a gas sensor for green leaf volatile detection. Transducers 2021 doi: 10.1109/Transducers50396.2021.9495597
Sun G, Mural RV, Turkus JD, Schnable JC (2021) Quantitative resistance loci to southern rust mapped in a temperate maize diversity panel. Phytopathology doi: 10.1101/2021.04.02.438220 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2021.04.02.438220
Mural RV, Grzybowski M, Miao C, Damke A, Sapkota S, Boyles RE, Salas Fernandez MG, Schnable PS, Sigmon B, Kresovich S, Schnable JC (2021) Meta-analysis identifies pleiotropic loci controlling phenotypic trade-offs in sorghum. Genetics doi: 10.1093/genetics/iyab087 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2020.10.27.355495