Optimizing root architecture for drought stress resilience
Goals
How does a plant respond when it experiences insufficient water? This team examines how the plant’s roots, and its underlying architecture, acclimate to a shortage of water. How does water deficit steer root development, in particular root branching? And how do these developmental changes contribute to water uptake and overall resilience of the plant to drought?
Approach
The team combines experimental and modelling approaches. The purpose is to identify components in the plant that are related to root plasticity – which is the way the roots of a plant adjust their shape and function in their environment. The team aims to define the molecular mechanisms underlying root architecture adaptation to water deficiency and to predict molecular networks. It also investigates the role of shoot signalling in root growth. Furthermore, it integrates models describing root cell function with models which reflect the behaviour of the whole plant. This will allow the team to predict how root plasticity contributes to plant stress resilience.
Activities
The team will use a wide variety of experimental and computational approaches. The aim is to resolve the molecular networks underpinning optimal root system architecture for drought resilience. The methods used include natural variation screens – which is an experimental way to pinpoint which gene is responsible for a specific phenotype of interest. Furthermore, the team uses cell and molecular biology, plant physiology and automated phenotyping. For the latter, advanced sensors and other technologies that are available in a controlled environment monitor the plant to make analyses regarding its phenotype. Other methods used are cellular mechanistic modelling and whole-plant functional structural plant modelling.
Team
Work package leader: Christa Testerink, Professor of Plant Physiology, WUR
Alysha Somer, PhD candidate, WUR
Jochem Evers, Professor of Crop Physiology, WUR
Kirsten ten Tusscher, Professor of Computational Developmental Biology, UU
Ronald Pierik, Professor of Molecular Biology, WUR
Thijs Stegmann, PhD candidate, WUR
Viola Willemsen, Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology, WUR
Credits: image at the top of the page (drawings) – made by Eliza van Veen. The other image was made with BioRender.