In this series, we introduce you to the people behind CropXR. Who are they, what do they do, and why are they passionate about their work for CropXR?
Name: Froukje van der Wal
What is your professional role within CropXR?
Technician in PlantXR C5
Can you describe this role in a nutshell?
C5 is the abbreviation for the research group of CropXR ‘Maintaining flower, fruit and seed yield, and viability under abiotic stress’. It consists of five different work packages: C5.1: Life History ‘omics’ & Phenotyping, C5.2: Flowering time and inflorescence architecture, C5.3: Fertility, C5.4: Seed germination, C5.5: Gene regulatory networks (GRN) & modelling. Eventually, three PhD candidates and 2 postdocs will be working in these subgroups. They will be part of a team that includes the Principal Investigators from three universities: Ivo Rieu from Nijmegen, Marcel Proveniers from Utrecht and Richard Immink, Leónie Bentsink and Aalt-Jan van Dijk from Wageningen. I am part of this team. As a technician, I support everybody who is involved in this work.
Recently, we have started with one major experiment with the plant Arabidopsis to obtain data about its entire life history. Arabidopsis is considered a model plant. Therefore, it is perfect for this kind of research.
Each group focuses on a different part of the plant: its leaf, flower, pollen, and seeds. Furthermore, we study resilience. For this, we will examine the plants under mild drought stress. Their response is compared to their reaction under normal watering conditions. These data will become available for all subgroups under C5. This enables them to undertake additional experiments, depending on their own goals and field of interest, within their sub-group as mentioned above. Colleagues from bioinformatics are involved as well (C5.5). They will model the developmental and transitional stages of Arabidopsis with the experimental data obtained in the C5.1 to C5.4 sub-groups.
My job is to set up and coordinate the major experiment. The NPEC facilities in Utrecht and Wageningen are utilized for this. Moreover, I will support the PhD candidates and postdocs with the set-up and implementation of their growth experiments at NPEC. This are organizational and managing tasks. Furthermore, I will help with harvesting plant material. In addition, I will think along with the growing experiments. How can they be set up in a wise and clever manner? I will monitor how colleagues can help each other. If there is an overlap in research questions, certain experiments could be combined.
I monitor how colleagues can help each other
Why are you driven to contribute to the CropXR project?
It is a real challenge to enable and facilitate the collaboration of such a big group. Fortunately, it is a cooperative project with a lot of enthusiasm and knowledge. I am happy to be involved. I try to smoothen certain elements of the collaboration. Furthermore, I can contribute to generating useful data. This means a step forward in our knowledge of the (epi)genetic network in plants.
What is the main challenge you face?
Organizing this all and possibly being faced with certain limitations in my organizational skills. Moreover, I have the task of juggling frogs!
What do you personally hope to achieve within CropXR in the next (10) years:
I would like to develop new skills and I like working with big data sets as a user. It will be a team effort to develop a good growing system for Arabidopsis to measure several traits under different stressors. Together with the colleagues from NPEC, I hope we can achieve this!