Enhancing crop resilience against the challenge of drought stress is essential to guard our food security against ongoing climate changes. You will conduct experiments to understand how drought impacts wheat seedlings, and the extent to which this can be mitigated using exogenous plant hormone applications that modify plant physiological processes.
Department: Crop Science
Supervised by: Jake Bishop
Drought currently restricts global cereal production by approximately 10% and this situation is projected to worsen with climate change. Empirical evidence shows that exogenous application of Abscisic acid (ABA) can reduce the effects of drought by modifying plant physiology. The hormone encourages stomatal closure which reduces water loss from plant leaves and can increase water use efficiency. The objective of this study is to investigate the role of ABA applications in the growth and water use efficiency of seedlings for five spring wheat varieties during progressive soil drying. The research is closely related to an ongoing PhD project that aims to address the challenge of individual and combined drought and heat stress on wheat during flowering. The placement will provide valuable information about stress impacts at a different developmental stage and help us understand whether shorter-term experiments in seedlings can be used as a proxy for other developmental stages. At the same time, the placement will assess diverse varieties' responses to stress and explore the potential of ABA in alleviating drought impacts. The experiment will be conducted at Controlled Environment Laboratory on Whiteknights campus. The placement begins mid-June with designing and then conducting the experiment, imposing a water deficit by withdrawing irrigation water from the drought treatment plants, allowing them to dry through transpirational water loss. Data collection starts in July. You will measure how the plants respond to stress and ABA applications by taking a range of measurements including plant growth rate, stomatal conductance, transpiration rate, and biomass.
Tasks for the Student: Tasks include experimental design and setup (20%), data collection and analysis (40%), literature review (15%), report writing (20%), and presentation preparation (5%). The student will receive support and training in conducting each of these tasks.
We will favour applicants that can demonstrate a basic understanding of plant physiology, experimental design, and data analysis. The placement offers on-the-job training in all these aspects so will carefully consider all applications.
In this placement, the student will gain practical experience in designing and conducting plant experiments, utilizing data analysis software like RStudio, and writing scientific reports. They will work closely with a PhD student and receive guidance from the supervisor throughout the project. Moreover, the student will have hands-on exposure to advanced equipments used for phenotyping drought stress, including the AP4 porometer, infrared camera, thermal couples, photosynthesis meter, Chlorophyll meter (SPAD), and multispectral 3D scan. The student will also have an opportunity to present their project findings to a broader range of colleagues in our research department. This opportunity offers a holistic learning experience, merging varied research tasks while contributing to a larger project. It underscores skill development and substantial research exposure to enrich the student’s academic journey.
Crop Environment Laboratory, University of Reading
09:00 am to 16:30
Monday 17 June 2024 - Friday 06 September 2024
The deadline to apply for this project is 5pm on Friday 17th May 2024. To make an application, please go to the following link and complete the application form: https://forms.office.com/e/LDxskffW5H. Please remember the title of the project (listed at the top of the page) as you will need this to locate the project on the application form.