Research Director

Outline

Genetic improvement of the root system is essential to enhance crop production in sterile and unstable soil environments. However, evaluating the root system architecture in the soil is not technically feasible, thus severely limiting our ability to understand which root traits are critical for crop production. In an attempt to address this issue, we propose to obtain root-related multi-omics data, ROOTomics, by root phenotyping via an X-ray CT scanner along with shoot phenotyping and transcriptome analysis. ROOTomics will allow for the modeling of an ideal root system architecture that is robust to environmental stress, and based on this model, we aim to develop climate-resilient crops.

Collaborator