Talking Plant Science

The Talking Plant Science seminar series showcases experts from different disciplines to explore the challenges, discoveries and transformations impacting plant science globally.

Presented by The ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture, this public lecture series explores diverse topics to help join the dots between different approaches and transform plant science for the next generation.

Please note that all dates and times displayed are in Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST).

CONTACT

Phoebe Baldwin
p.baldwin@uq.edu.au

UPCOMING EVENTS

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Species interactions as drivers of plant community dynamics under global change

Lizzie Wandrag
University of Tasmania

Species 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.

Date: Tuesday 2 December 2025
Time: 10-11am AEST / 11am-12pm AEDT
Location: Zoom

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PAST EVENTS

Step by step evolution of strigolactone signalling pathway

Junko Kyozuka
Tohoku University

Strigolactones (SLs) serve dual functions as hormones that regulate growth and development and as rhizosphere signaling 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 signaling 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.

To 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 signaling in bryophytes may reflect its original role in optimizing growth and development.

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From plant traits to biodiversity-ecosystem function to climate mitigation and justice: A journey across scales, disciplines, and domains

Peter Reich
University of Michigan

Understanding and stewarding nature is our collective challenge.

Will 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.

Such 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.

Justly and too late, yet just in time.

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The good, the bad and the ugly: the dynamics of plant species retention in the landscape

Vanessa Adams
University of Tasmania

Successful 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?

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From trait dynamics to GxE for the target trait: Utilizing Stay Green and Multiple Physiological Traits for Enhanced Wheat Adaptation to Contrasting Drought Conditions

Daniela Bustos-Korts
Universidad Austral de Chile

Understanding 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.

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Redesigning plants to support long-term Space exploration and for on Earth sustainability

Jenny Mortimer
The University of Adelaide / ARC CoE in Plants for Space

Humans 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.

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Crop modelling for informing leaf photosynthesis and crop yield improvement

Alex Wu
The University of Queensland

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.

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Translational Research in Agriculture: How effectively does it work?

John Passioura
Australian National University

‘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.

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Hydromechanical forces in transpiring leaves: how the reversible collapse of minor vein xylem conduits protects against cavitation

N. Michele (Missy) Holbrook
Harvard University

Vascular 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.

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Plant capacities to adapt to abiotic stresses

Rana Munns
University of Western Australia, Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology

Climate 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.

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Portrait- David Kainer, CBI Annual Review, November 13, 2018.

Digging deeper into the GWAS signal with a little machine learning along the way

David Kainer
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Genome 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.

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The nature of exploitable variation

Bruce Walsh
University of Arizona

Bruce 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.

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Plant Breeding for circular bioeconomy systems

Charlie Messina
University of Florida

Charlie 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.

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