description
- The need to meet the EU’s demand for food and other plant products while preserving natural environments for recreation and conservation of biodiversity in the face of increased population and climatic pressures, has led to an unprecedented demand for an improved understanding of resource capture and utilisation by plants, and of how abiotic stress impacts on plant performance. Imaging techniques are currently being applied in biomedicine to enhance spatial and temporal detection of physiological processes at a range of scales. In plant sciences the potential of imaging techniques in both fundamental and applied research has as yet to be widely exploited. We propose to combine thermal infra-red and chlorophyll fluorescence imaging to investigate the impacts of abiotic stress on photosynthesis and transpiration, at the level of the leaf, plant, and crop. The techniques will be applied to detecting spatial and temporal responses to a range of environmental stresses in photosynthetic reactions and stomatal conductance of leaves of transgenic plants with altered capacity to scavenge reactive oxygen species. Additionally, the techniques will be applied to detection of genotypic variation in rye grass (a model monocot crop) and food crops (wheat, potato) in photosynthetic reactions and stomatal conductance under diverse types, durations, and degrees of environmental stress. Genotypes with different physiological behaviour will be characterised to improve our understanding of stress responses of these crops. Finally, whole crops will be imaged to rapidly determine the impacts of different agronomic practices on carbon dioxide and water fluxes.