Talking Plant Science: Alex Wu

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture is proud to bring you the next seminar in our Talking Plant Science series presented by Dr Alex Wu.

Crop modelling for informing leaf photosynthesis and crop yield improvement

An increasing global food demand begs new strategy for crop yield improvement. Leaf CO₂ assimilation is an important driver of crop growth and yield. However, the translation of leaf photosynthetic manipulation to crop yield performance is less straightforward. Yield is a complex emergent property driven by instantaneous leaf CO₂ assimilation, summed over the whole canopy of the crop and across the entire crop life cycle, all interacting with environmental effects on growth and development of the crop. Here, I will present a ‘cross-scale’ crop modelling effort used to develop integrative leaf-to-field modelling tools, offering new predictive capabilities to aid photosynthesis and yield improvement. This: (i) enables in silico field testing of putative strategies for leaf photosynthetic manipulation in target population of environments; (ii) offers a platform for the dissection of crop growth components and identification of key photosynthetic properties for growth enhancement. The two-pronged, but complementary pathways are generating new information on the value proposition of photosynthetic manipulation and informing fundamental and applied research directions, helping to discover and support new strategies for crop yield improvement. Potential synergies with other crop research technologies are discussed.

Dr Alex Wu

Alex Wu is a crop modeller. He completed a postdoc in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis and an ARC DECRA. He is known for his research on modelling leaf photosynthetic CO₂ assimilation and field crop yield performance for supporting yield improvement. He has developed in-depth understanding, using cross-scale crop modelling, of two-way interactions between leaf biochemical, canopy structure, and whole crop growth and yield. Alex has generated a priori yield impact assessment of photosynthesis bioengineering of crops, aiding fundamental research for enhancing yield improvement outcomes. He was awarded the Australian Society of Plant Scientist Peter Goldacre Medal in 2020.