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DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260303T110000
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SUMMARY:Talking Plant Science: Frank Sainsbury
DESCRIPTION: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 Frank Sainsbury. \nReprogramming Viruses to Protect Plants from the Inside and Out\nViruses are deceptively simple and remarkably potent. They infect all forms of cellular life and while viruses are known for disease\, they exist as partners in different types of symbiotic relationships with their hosts\, ranging from parasitic to mutualistic. Thanks to modern biotechnology they have also been harnessed for bespoke benefits in medicine and agriculture. My research group uses recombinant virus-like particle expression to understand the structure-function relationship of virus capsids and to rebuild viruses as containers for proteins and non-native nucleic acids. Using these approaches\, we are exploiting some of the unique properties of viruses to devise ways to prevent the spread of plant pests and pathogens\, including nematodes and disease-causing viruses. The environmental stability of bacteriophage capsids makes for long-lived carriers of RNA-based pesticides to soil. The ability of persistent plant viruses to exist relatively unchanged for millennia inside their hosts provides an opportunity to bestow crop resistance to herbivores and parasitic plant viruses via enduring extrachromosomal transcription in plants. Both projects support our goal to use reconstructed and reprogrammed virus-like particles as delivery vehicles in challenging environments where stability and/or transfer of sensitive cargos are current bottlenecks. \n \nDr Frank Sainsbury\nGriffith University \nDr Frank Sainsbury leads a physical virology lab at Griffith University. His research group is primarily interested in virus capsids\, pushing the boundaries of how they assemble\, and what can be learned from using them as biochemical reaction vessels and delivery vehicles. Dr Sainsbury trained as a plant virologist at the John Innes Centre in the UK and was hooked by the deceptive simplicity of viruses and by their potential for use in biotechnology. His PhD work included the invention of protein expression systems in plants that have supported Phase III clinical trials of influenza vaccines and led to a major UK innovation award. Since taking up an ARC DECRA at the University of Queensland in 2014\, he has developed a program of research into the assembly\, engineering\, and uses of virus-like particles. In 2018 he was awarded a CSIRO Fellowship in Synthetic Biology to explore the directed assembly of virus coat proteins into protein cages with non-natural geometries. He subsequently moved to Griffith University and in 2023\, he was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship to evolve virus capsids for applied uses in agriculture and health.
URL:https://www.plantsuccess.org/event/talking-plant-science-frank-sainsbury/
CATEGORIES:Talking Plant Science
ORGANIZER;CN="Plant Success":MAILTO:admin@plantsuccess.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20251202T100000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20251202T110000
DTSTAMP:20260504T200955
CREATED:20251119T192354Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251201T154201Z
UID:5506-1764669600-1764673200@www.plantsuccess.org
SUMMARY:Talking Plant Science: Lizzie Wandrag
DESCRIPTION: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 Lizzie Wandrag. \nSpecies interactions as drivers of plant community dynamics under global change\nSpecies interactions\, including mutualisms\, competition and plant-soil feedbacks\, govern patterns of coexistence\, community assembly\, and ecosystem resilience. Yet these interactions are often the first components of ecosystems to be disrupted under global change. I will explore how species interactions shape plant performance and community composition\, drawing on empirical examples from both native and invaded systems. I will highlight how species interactions mediate invasion success and impact\, and how altered disturbance regimes amplify or suppress these processes. Together\, these perspectives underscore the central role of species interactions in shaping plant community dynamics in a rapidly changing world\, and highlight the need to integrate species interactions into community ecology to improve predictions of community change. \n \nDr Lizzie Wandrag\nUniversity of Tasmania \nLizzie a plant community ecologist with a focus on examining how biotic interactions affect and are affected by plant species’ and community response to global change. She is increasingly interested in the role of the soil microbiome in driving plant community composition and recovery from perturbation\, \nLizzie often works with weedy and invasive plant species. Examining the factors that allows some plant species to dominate in some locations provides opportunities to understand the ecological and evolutionary processes that govern plant community composition more generally.
URL:https://www.plantsuccess.org/event/talking-plant-science-lizzie-wandrag/
CATEGORIES:Talking Plant Science
ORGANIZER;CN="Plant Success":MAILTO:admin@plantsuccess.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20251007T140000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20251007T150000
DTSTAMP:20260504T200955
CREATED:20250910T150002Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251006T193144Z
UID:5319-1759845600-1759849200@www.plantsuccess.org
SUMMARY:Talking Plant Science: Junko Kyozuka
DESCRIPTION: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 Distinguished Professor Junko Kyozuka. \nStep by step evolution of strigolactone signalling pathway\nStrigolactones (SLs) serve dual functions as hormones that regulate growth and development and as rhizosphere signalling molecules that promote symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in flowering plants. How SLs acquired these dual roles remained unclear. We reported that the ancestral function of SLs was as rhizosphere signals\, which were later co-opted as hormones through the gradual evolution of signalling components. SLs are perceived by DWARF14 (D14)\, which interacts with the F-box protein MAX2 and SMXL repressors; D14 arose via duplication of KARRIKIN INSENSITIVE2 (KAI2)\, a receptor for the unidentified ligand KL\, in the common ancestor of seed plants. KAI2 itself likely originated via horizontal gene transfer prior to streptophyte evolution. Phylogenetic analysis indicates that KL signaling was established in the common ancestor of land plants. \nTo investigate the ancestral role of KL signaling\, we analyzed its function in two bryophytes\, the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha and the moss Physcomitrium patens. In both species\, KL signaling modulates growth by regulating cytokinin accumulation. We propose that the functions of KL signalling in bryophytes may reflect its original role in optimizing growth and development. \n \n  \nDistinguished Professor Junko Kyozuka\nTohoku University
URL:https://www.plantsuccess.org/event/talking-plant-science-junko-kyozuka/
CATEGORIES:Talking Plant Science
ORGANIZER;CN="Plant Success":MAILTO:admin@plantsuccess.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20250417T110000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20250417T120000
DTSTAMP:20260504T200955
CREATED:20250325T194440Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250416T165120Z
UID:4997-1744887600-1744891200@www.plantsuccess.org
SUMMARY:Talking Plant Science: Peter Reich
DESCRIPTION: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 Professor Peter Reich. \nFrom plant traits to biodiversity-ecosystem function to climate mitigation and justice: A journey across scales\, disciplines\, and domains\nUnderstanding and stewarding nature is our collective challenge. \nWill ecosystems maintain their biodiversity and function under global environmental change\, and continue to sequester carbon and slow climate change?  Can traits (means and diversity) simplify the complexity of ecology enough that we can make predictable sense of it? To help address these issues I engage in studies at scales from leaf to globe and on topics from ecophysiology to community assembly to biogeochemistry. This work ranges from identification of global trait-tradeoff and metabolic response functions; to ecosystem-scale experiments with factors such as CO2\, temperature\, rainfall\, fire and biodiversity; to cross-continental observations and earth system modeling of global biogeochemical cycles. Using examples from diverse ecosystems I will show how framing research around fundamental hypotheses about complex issues\, and how they scale across hierarchies\, space and time\, can help uncover both predictable general patterns and unexpected surprises. \nSuch understanding is also useful to how we might approach natural climate solutions\, which need to consider not just carbon sequestration but impacts of\, and impacts on\, biodiversity and justice too. And finally\, we ecologists need to better link our domains (e.g. natural climate solutions) with other pathways to decarbonization. If we combine increased acquisition and storage of carbon on land with just decarbonization via increased energy efficiency\, reliance on renewable energy\, and electrification\, we can slow and stop climate change (and save a boatload of money) by mid-century. \nJustly and too late\, yet just in time. \n \nProfessor Peter Reich\nPeter B. Reich is Director of the Institute for Global Change Biology at the University of Michigan\, and has long-standing affiliations with the Department of Forest Resources\, University of Minnesota and the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment\, Western Sydney University. Reich helped pioneer the development and up-scaling of trait-based ecology and is a world leader in running state-of-the-art ecosystem-scale climate change and biodiversity experiments. He also helped launch the science education channel\, MinuteEarth\, now with >750 million views on various platforms. Reich is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Laureate in Ecology and Conservation Biology. He is an avid but extremely mediocre cross-country skier and piano player\, and also regularly engages (with a bit less frustration) in pick-up basketball and bread baking. He worries incessantly about the state of people and nature on our planet\, yet despite so much evidence of our collective failures\, is an optimist about our shared future.
URL:https://www.plantsuccess.org/event/talking-plant-science-peter-reich/
LOCATION:https://uqz.zoom.us/j/84296813859
CATEGORIES:Talking Plant Science
ORGANIZER;CN="Plant Success":MAILTO:admin@plantsuccess.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20241113T110000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20241113T120000
DTSTAMP:20260504T200955
CREATED:20240929T193829Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241112T171843Z
UID:4588-1731495600-1731499200@www.plantsuccess.org
SUMMARY:Talking Plant Science: Vanessa Adams
DESCRIPTION: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 Associate Professor Vanessa Adams. \nThe good\, the bad and the ugly: the dynamics of plant species retention in the landscape\nSuccessful conservation of plants depends upon an understanding of the biogeography of species; how actions can counteract threats to species loss and maintain natural assemblages of species; and the social values placed on these systems and how this influences communities and individuals to support these actions (or not). Thus\, conservation and environmental management sit at the cross-section of physical and human geography and effective action will leverage knowledge from both. This talk will present what we know about the good\, bad and ugly of plant retention in the landscape\, historic drivers causing the ugly\, and future looking solutions that can leverage the good. Lastly – it will pose the question of how can we prioritize actions (e.g. in stu or ex situ conservation\, restoration or protection) to maximise species retention taking into account land use changes\, climate change\, and complex interactions between these? \n \nAssociate Professor Vanessa Adams\nDr Vanessa Adams is an Associate Professor in Conservation and Planning and ARC Future Fellow at the University of Tasmania. Her research focuses on modelling dynamic social-ecological systems to inform conservation decisions that improve ecosystems and the communities they support. This means her research is broadly aligned with three themes: ecological modelling (to understand dynamic ecosystems)\, socio-economic aspects of conservation (to understand the human dimensions of social-ecological systems)\, and conservation decision theory (to inform decision making). Vanessa was raised in New Mexico (USA) but now calls Australia home. She has worked in a variety roles ranging from actuarial analyst for global consulting firm Mercer HR to research scientist at universities. She spent a year as a Fulbright scholar conducting research at University of Queensland in 2004 and completed her PhD at James Cook University in 2011. During her PhD she was awarded a Sir Keith Murdoch fellowship through the American Australian Association to support a component of her research conducted in Fiji modelling costs of conservation actions to local fishermen. Vanessa partners with relevant government agencies and NGOs to ensure that her research is relevant to policy makers and is positioned to influence on-ground conservation.
URL:https://www.plantsuccess.org/event/talking-plant-science-vanessa-adams/
LOCATION:Zoom
CATEGORIES:Talking Plant Science
ORGANIZER;CN="Plant Success":MAILTO:admin@plantsuccess.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20240927T090000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20240927T100000
DTSTAMP:20260504T200955
CREATED:20240827T161645Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240926T143849Z
UID:4456-1727427600-1727431200@www.plantsuccess.org
SUMMARY:Talking Plant Science: Daniela Bustos-Korts
DESCRIPTION: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 Associate Professor Daniela Bustos-Korts. \nFrom trait dynamics to GxE for the target trait: Utilizing Stay Green and Multiple Physiological Traits for Enhanced Wheat Adaptation to Contrasting Drought Conditions\nUnderstanding and predicting genotype adaptation to complex stresses such as drought can be significantly enhanced by integrating information from secondary phenotypes. These phenotypes may include various yield components measured at a single time point or encompass trait dynamics over time. The stay green trait\, which reflects a genotype’s ability to maintain greener canopies under drought conditions\, has emerged as a promising candidate for yield prediction; genotypes exhibiting this trait tend to sustain grain filling rates\, resulting in improved yields during drought events. However\, modelling these traits presents challenges due to the hierarchical error structure inherent in high-throughput phenotyping\, which encompasses measurement\, plot\, and genotypic errors\, alongside the complex dynamics of the trait itself. In this study\, we employ one-dimensional and two-dimensional P-splines to disentangle measurement and plot errors from true genotypic signals. This approach enables us to effectively model the dynamics of the stay green trait and its interaction with genotype-by-environment (GxE) effects over time\, as demonstrated with a diverse panel of spring wheat grown in contrasting water regimes in Chile. \n \nAssociate Professor Daniela Bustos-Korts\nDaniela’s main interest is genotype to phenotype modelling to characterize and predict crop adaptation across multiple environments. These modelling approaches integrate physiology\, crop modelling and statistics. She works at Universidad Austral de Chile\, leading projects about wheat adaptation to dry environments. She also teaches bachelor and postgraduate courses focusing on models to support breeding and agronomic management decisions.
URL:https://www.plantsuccess.org/event/talking-plant-science-daniela-bustos-korts/
LOCATION:Zoom
CATEGORIES:Talking Plant Science
ORGANIZER;CN="Plant Success":MAILTO:admin@plantsuccess.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20240806T100000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20240806T110000
DTSTAMP:20260504T200955
CREATED:20240711T175441Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240806T190549Z
UID:4225-1722938400-1722942000@www.plantsuccess.org
SUMMARY:Talking Plant Science: Jenny Mortimer
DESCRIPTION: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 Associate Professor Jenny Mortimer. \nRedesigning plants to support long-term Space exploration and for on Earth sustainability\nHumans are planning to explore Space further than ever before\, with a return to the lunar surface happening as part of the Artemis III mission in 2026\, and with a crewed landing planned for the surface of Mars in the 2030s. Important to this is the ability to support astronauts to thrive in space\, as opposed to just survive. Food is a key part of this\, and with ~10 tonnes of food required for a 4-person mission to Mars\, there is an urgent need to produce food in situ\, as well as materials and therapeutics. Growth of plants on planetary surfaces will be in closed environment agriculture (CEA) facilities\, similar to vertical farming systems being developed here on Earth. However\, plants did not evolve to grow in these environments. Here\, I will discuss how we can use the lens of Space to innovate for sustainable agriculture. Beyond that\, we can use the strict circular economy of Space to develop robust and sustainable in plantabiomanufacturing\, supporting a transition to a bioeconomy .  \n \n  \nAssociate Professor Jenny Mortimer\nJenny Mortimer is Associate Professor of Plant Synthetic Biology in the School of Agriculture\, Food and Wine at the University of Adelaide (UoA)\, Australia\, where she is also Deputy Director of the Waite Research Institute. She is Chief Investigator (CI) and UoA node leader of the ARC Centre of Excellence Plants for Space (P4S). She is also an Affiliate Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory\, USA\, and a Director of Plant Systems Biology at the Joint BioEnergy Institute\, USA. After completing her PhD at Cambridge University\, UK\, she began exploring how engineering the plant cell wall could deliver sustainable and economically viable biofuels: first as a postdoc in Cambridge\, then as a research fellow at RIKEN Japan\, before joining Berkeley Lab in 2014\, and Adelaide in 2021. Her team’s research focuses on understanding and manipulating plant cell metabolism\, with a focus on complex glycosylation. The goal is to develop crops which contribute to a sustainable and renewable bioeconomy. \nAt Adelaide\, her group is using synthetic biology to develop new crops for food and materials production in controlled growth environments – including for Space settlement (P4S)\, applying new agricultural biotechnologies to develop resilient field crops as a CI in the ARC Training Centre for Future Crops Development\, and developing Australian feedstocks for sustainable jet fuel as a CI in ARC Research Hub for Engineering Plants to Replace Fossil Carbon. In the US\, her group works to reengineer the plant cell wall for the sustainable production of fuels and biochemicals from biomass\, and to enhance plant-microbiome interactions for sustainable biomass crop production. She was selected as a World Economic Forum Young Scientist (2016/17)\, where she contributed to the WEF Code of Ethics for Researchers (widgets.weforum.org/coe)\, and she is an editor for the journals Plant Cell Physiology and Plant Journal. \nYou can find out more information on the lab here: mortimerlab.org/
URL:https://www.plantsuccess.org/event/talking-plant-science-jenny-mortimer/
LOCATION:Zoom
CATEGORIES:Talking Plant Science
ORGANIZER;CN="Plant Success":MAILTO:admin@plantsuccess.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20240417T110000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20240417T120000
DTSTAMP:20260504T200955
CREATED:20240310T165154Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240416T181355Z
UID:3978-1713351600-1713355200@www.plantsuccess.org
SUMMARY:Talking Plant Science: Alex Wu
DESCRIPTION: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. \nCrop modelling for informing leaf photosynthesis and crop yield improvement\nAn 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. \n \nDr Alex Wu\nAlex 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.
URL:https://www.plantsuccess.org/event/talking-plant-science-alex-wu/
LOCATION:Zoom
CATEGORIES:Talking Plant Science
ORGANIZER;CN="Plant Success":MAILTO:admin@plantsuccess.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20230905T150000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20230905T160000
DTSTAMP:20260504T200955
CREATED:20230823T172400Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230906T200508Z
UID:3639-1693926000-1693929600@www.plantsuccess.org
SUMMARY:Talking Plant Science: John Passioura
DESCRIPTION: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 John Passioura. \nTranslational Research in Agriculture: How effectively does it work?\n‘Translational research’ became an increasingly common term when it was realised that much agriculturally inspired basic research failed to contribute to the improvement of crops. Most of the failure has come from laboratory-based attempts to ameliorate abiotic stresses. Dealing with biotic stress has been much more successful; the control of pests and weeds is often enabled by transforming crops with single genes\, for such genes have little or no influence on a crop’s metabolism. By contrast\, abiotic stress varies with the weather; i.e. crops respond systemically\, over a range of levels of organisation (e.g. organelles\, cells\, tissues\, organs)\, with many feedbacks and feedforwards. Drought is the most pervasive form of abiotic stress. There are several thousand papers that have searched\, ineffectively\, for ‘drought resistance’\, a term that usually defies useful definition. By contrast\, dealing with a limited water supply (e.g. inadequate seasonal rainfall)\, rather than with ‘drought’\, has effectively increased water-limited yield through agronomic innovation based on improving water-use efficiency. A major reason for the predominant failure of translational research from laboratory to field is that the peer-review system is too narrow; i.e. reviewers have the same backgrounds as the authors. Effective translation requires the addition of reviewers who can assess effective pathways from laboratory to field. \n \nDr John Passioura\nJohn Passioura graduated with a bachelor’s degree in agricultural science (1958) followed by a Ph.D. in soil chemistry (1963) from Melbourne University\, Australia. He joined CSIRO in 1966 after 3 years as a Postdoc in Europe. He currently holds an emeritus appointment at ANU in Canberra\, and was formerly Leader of the Crop Adaptation Program in CSIRO. His research has ranged over: soil chemistry and physics (transport of water and nutrients in soil and uptake by roots); plant physiology (water relations\, drivers of growth rate and adaptation to abiotic stresses); and wheat pre-breeding and agronomy directed at improving water-limited productivity of dryland crops. He was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1994.  He spent 6 years on partial secondment to the Australian Grains Research and Development Organization (GRDC) where he oversaw a portfolio of projects on soil and water management which aimed at improving both the productivity and environmental performance of Australian grain farms. Since then he has written several reviews relating to crop productivity and the pursuit of effective agricultural research. He has also worked as a consultant to the CGIAR\, undertaking high-level reviews of several of their programs\, existing or prospective.
URL:https://www.plantsuccess.org/event/talking-plant-science-john-passioura/
LOCATION:Zoom
CATEGORIES:Talking Plant Science
ORGANIZER;CN="Plant Success":MAILTO:admin@plantsuccess.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20230810T100000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20230810T110000
DTSTAMP:20260504T200955
CREATED:20230725T182049Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230809T170422Z
UID:3592-1691661600-1691665200@www.plantsuccess.org
SUMMARY:Talking Plant Science: Michele Holbrook
DESCRIPTION: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 Professor N. Michele Holbrook. \nHydromechanical forces in transpiring leaves: how the reversible collapse of minor vein xylem conduits protects against cavitation\nVascular plants transport water in a metastable state putting their lifeline to the soil at risk of embolism formation. Stomata are essential for protecting xylem from developing potentially damaging tensions\, yet angiosperm stomata are mechanically and physiologically constrained in their ability to respond to rapid increases in transpiration rate. Here I discuss how the reversible collapse of xylem conduits in the highest vein orders protects xylem conduits during environmentally-driven fluctuations in transpiration rate. The goal of my talk is to illuminate what happens inside a transpiring leaf and to connect this massive movement of water and energy to the functioning of plants at larger scales. \n \nProfessor N. Michele Holbrook\nProfessor Michele Holbrook studies the physics and physiology of vascular transport in plants with the goal of understanding how constraints on the movement of water and solutes between soil and leaves influences ecological and evolutionary processes. Dr. Holbrook is currently working on questions relating to cavitation\, stomatal mechanics\, leaf hydraulic design\, and xylem evolution.
URL:https://www.plantsuccess.org/event/talking-plant-science-michele-holbrook/
LOCATION:Zoom
CATEGORIES:Talking Plant Science
ORGANIZER;CN="Plant Success":MAILTO:admin@plantsuccess.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20230413T110000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20230413T120000
DTSTAMP:20260504T200955
CREATED:20230321T203124Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230412T182810Z
UID:3284-1681383600-1681387200@www.plantsuccess.org
SUMMARY:Talking Plant Science: Rana Munns
DESCRIPTION: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 Professor Rana Munns. \nPlant capacities to adapt to abiotic stresses\nClimate change and the challenge of feeding an increasing world population pose two existential threats. Climate change causes increased global temperatures that reduce crop yield\, and the increasing world population demands higher productivity of crops and pastures on decreasing areas of traditional agricultural land. To understand the responses in common to the various abiotic stresses\, we distinguish seven capacities that plants possess for adapting to abiotic stresses that result in continued growth and a productive yield. These include the capacities to take up essential resources\, supply them to different plant parts\, generate the energy required to maintain cellular functions\, communicate between plant parts\, and manage structural assets in the face of changed circumstances. We show how these capacities are crucial for reproductive success of major crops during drought\, salinity\, temperature extremes\, flooding\, and nutrient stress. This helps us to focus on the strategies that enhance plant adaptation to all stresses and identify key responses that can be targets for plant breeding. \n \nProfessor Rana Munns\nRana Munns is recognised internationally for her research in the fundamental principles of crop adaptation to salinity\, and for applications of these insights. She defined the critical plant processes for tolerance to soil salinity\, and showed which distinguishes salinity stress from drought stress. She discovered genes for sodium exclusion and led a research team on the genetic basis of salt tolerance in durum wheat\, which produced breeding lines yielding 25% more grain on saline soils in farmers’ fields. \nShe has retired from CSIRO Agriculture and Food\, and lives at Lennox Head NSW. She is now Emeritus Professor at the University of Western Australia. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science\, and The World Academy of Sciences.
URL:https://www.plantsuccess.org/event/talking-plant-science-rana-munns/
LOCATION:Zoom
CATEGORIES:Talking Plant Science
ORGANIZER;CN="Plant Success":MAILTO:admin@plantsuccess.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20220908T090000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20220908T100000
DTSTAMP:20260504T200955
CREATED:20220822T182843Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221219T173611Z
UID:2527-1662627600-1662631200@www.plantsuccess.org
SUMMARY:Talking Plant Science: David Kainer
DESCRIPTION: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 David Kainer. \nDigging deeper into the GWAS signal with a little machine learning along the way\nGenome Wide Association Studies\, or GWAS\, have become a standard tool for the discovery of the genetic basis of complex traits. For over a decade\, results from GWAS have been used to guide experimentation\, marker assisted selection and genetic engineering efforts. But for complex traits where we don’t have huge sample numbers (as with most plant studies!)\, GWAS outcomes can be very limited by multiple testing correction. Only loci that make it below the magic p-value threshold are deemed interesting. These loci often explain only a small fraction of the trait’s heritability\, yet we know intuitively that many causal loci sit just ‘out of reach’. Here I will relate our efforts to relax those thresholds with the goal of reliably obtaining more of the trait genetic architecture. To deal with the peril of increasing false positives\, multi-omic data sources such as gene expression and metabolic pathways can be fused into multiplex networks upon which network propagation algorithms tease apart the false positives from the true positives. I will demonstrate the process with examples in Arabidopsis and other species. \nAbout the speaker: David is currently a Staff Scientist in the Computational Predictive Biology group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory\, Tennessee USA. He specializes in analysing the genomic basis of complex traits to guide crop improvement through breeding and engineering. David received his PhD from the Australian National University’s Research School of Biology in 2017 after an earlier career in computer engineering and mobile game development. David focuses on biological network analysis\, where multiple forms of ‘omic data are rendered as network layers and the combined (or Multiplexed) network is jointly traversed by machine learning algorithms such as Random Walks. This provides a platform for knowledge synthesis and discovery from highly complex\, interconnected\, heterogeneous data — a 21st century solution for a 21st century challenge.
URL:https://www.plantsuccess.org/event/talking-plant-science-david-kainer/
LOCATION:Zoom
CATEGORIES:Talking Plant Science
ORGANIZER;CN="Plant Success":MAILTO:admin@plantsuccess.org
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DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20220601T140000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20220601T150000
DTSTAMP:20260504T200955
CREATED:20220330T194138Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221219T173558Z
UID:2164-1654092000-1654095600@www.plantsuccess.org
SUMMARY:Talking Plant Science: Bruce Walsh
DESCRIPTION: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. \nBruce Walsh is a population and quantitative geneticist with very diverse interests in plant and animal breeding\, evolutionary biology\, and statistical methods.  He obtained a BS in Mathematical Population Biology from UC Davis\, and a PhD in genetics from the University of Washington. He is currently a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology\, Plant Sciences\, and Public Health at the University of Arizona. He is perhaps best known for the two graduate textbooks on quantitative genetics that he coauthored with Mike Lynch (Lynch & Walsh\, 1998\, Genetics and Analysis of Quantitative Traits [a new version\, along with Peter Visscher at UQ\, is in the works]; and Walsh & Lynch 2018\, Evolution and Selection of Quantitative Traits). He has taught almost 100 short courses on quantitative genetics in over two dozen countries\, on all continents (except for Antarctica\, where he is still awaiting an invitation). He is also an avid Lepidopterist\, having described almost 30 new species of moths and has three species named after him.
URL:https://www.plantsuccess.org/event/talking-plant-science-bruce-walsh/
LOCATION:Zoom
CATEGORIES:Talking Plant Science
ORGANIZER;CN="Plant Success":MAILTO:admin@plantsuccess.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20220325T100000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20220325T110000
DTSTAMP:20260504T200955
CREATED:20220205T005223Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221219T173438Z
UID:1939-1648202400-1648206000@www.plantsuccess.org
SUMMARY:Talking Plant Science: Charlie Messina
DESCRIPTION:The ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture is proud to bring you the first seminar in our new Talking Plant Science series. \nCharlie Messina is a Professor of Predictive Breeding in the Department of Horticultural Sciences at the University of Florida. His program focuses on the development of prediction methods for agriculture and horticulture.
URL:https://www.plantsuccess.org/event/talking-plant-science-charlie-messina/
LOCATION:Zoom
CATEGORIES:Talking Plant Science
ORGANIZER;CN="Plant Success":MAILTO:admin@plantsuccess.org
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