Understanding how crops respond and adapt to environmental stress is critical for developing climate-resilient agriculture. My research focuses on the physiological and genetic mechanisms underlying plant responses to abiotic stresses such as salinity, drought, and heat. During my PhD, I developed a weight-based phenotyping platform that enables semi-automated measurements of transpiration and water-use dynamics across diverse Chenopodium quinoa accessions. Using this system, I investigate how physiological traits vary among genotypes under stress conditions. In parallel, I study metabolic and genetic responses to abiotic stress and integrate phenotypic and genotypic data using approaches such as Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS). By combining high-throughput phenotyping with genetic analysis, my work aims to identify stress-resilient genotypes and uncover the underlying mechanisms that enable plants to maintain growth and productivity under challenging environmental conditions.
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Research Stay at the University of Adelaide
From June to October 2025, I completed my research stay at the University of Adelaide (Australia) with Prof. Stuart J. Roy, supported by the Bayer Foundation Fellowship. During this period, I worked with the OzBarley population, a national panel of elite Australian barley varieties, to investigate genetic variation in tolerance to salt and drought stress. Using data from replicated field trials, I integrated phenotypic measurements with genomic and transcriptomic datasets, including Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) and RNA sequencing. This systems genetics approach allowed us to identify genetic loci associated with sodium homeostasis and stress tolerance in barley. This work contributes to ongoing efforts to understand the genetic basis of stress tolerance in crops and to support the development of varieties adapted to increasingly challenging environmental conditions.
