Ravi Mural

Ravi Mural

Research Assistant Professor Center for Plant Science Innovation

  • Cohort Postdocs and Visiting Scientists
  • Tenure 2019-2023
  • Now Assistant Professor at South Dakota State University
  • ORCID 0000-0002-5489-9918

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

  • 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 Vladimir Torres-Rodriguez (now a Scientist at Traits Company).
  • 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
  • Istipliler D, Tross MC, Bouwens B, Jin H, Yufeng Ge, Yang J, Mural RV, Schnable JC (2025) Heritability, heterosis, and hybrid/inbred classification ability of maize leaf hyperspectral signals under changing soil nitrogen. Crop Science doi: 10.1002/csc2.70073
  • Ali W, Grzybowski M, Torres-Rodriguez JV, Li F, Shrestha N, Mathivanan RK, de Bernardeaux G, Hoang K, Mural R, Roston RL, Schnable JC, Sahay S (2025) Quantitative genetics of photosynthetic trait variation in maize. Journal of Experimental Botany doi: 10.1093/jxb/eraf198 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2024.11.25.625283
  • 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
  • Moura Dias H, de Teledo NA, Mural RV, Schnable JC, Van Sluys MA (2024) THI1 gene evolutionary trends: A comprehensive plant-focused Assessment via data Mining and large-scale analysis. Genome Biology and Evolution doi: 10.1093/gbe/evae212
  • Jin H, Tross MC, Tan R, Newton L, Mural RV, Yang J, Thompson AM, Schnable JC (2024) Imitating the "breeder’s eye": predicting grain yield from measurements of non-yield traits. The Plant Phenome Journal doi: 10.1002/ppj2.20102 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2023.11.29.568906
  • 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
  • Sun G, Yu H, Wang P, Lopez-Guerrero MG, Mural RV, Mizero ON, Grzybowski M, Song B, van Dijk K, Schachtman DP, Zhang C, Schnable JC (2023) A role for heritable transcriptomic variation in maize adaptation to temperate environments. Genome Biology doi: 10.1186/s13059-023-02891-3 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2022.01.28.478212
  • 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