Application of LED lighting in Plant Breeding: Effect of light intensity and spectral composition on plant metabolism, stress tolerance and yield quality
Thesis supervisor: Gábor Galiba
Location of studies (in Hungarian): Agricultural Institute, Centre for Agricultural Research, Martonvásár Abbreviation of location of studies: ATK
Description of the research topic:
The light can probably be considered to be the most important environmental cue for plants on earth. Besides the photosynthesis, light quality and quantity influence many plant morphological and developmental processes, including germination, seedling establishment, architecture of the mature plant, the transition to reproduction phase and the regulation of primary and secondary metabolites. All of them are strongly affect the growth, yield production and quality. Till now, it was a big challenge to mimic the optimal light fluence and spectral composition under artificial growth conditions. Recently, the LED technology enable to optimize the light environment (through flexible changing of light intensity and spectral distribution) both in time and space to reach the high quality yield production year around. However, to be able to make full advantage of this technology, detailed knowledge is needed about the plant responses to light quality and quantity in several species at different developmental stages as well as about the physiological and metabolic processes underlying them.
Therefore, our research focuses on the cultivation of crops under different LED light regimes. The effect of the light intensity and spectral composition of far red, red, green, blue and UV radiation are investigated on plant development, primary and secondary metabolism, stress response and yield quality. Among other, we study the light-dependent changes of photosynthetic processes, pigment composition, lipidomics, primary and secondary metabolism and antioxidant status. Our particular aims are to discover the mechanisms related to the light-induced shift in primary and secondary metabolism in plants, and to determine which light conditions are the best for each cultivated crops including cereals, vegetables and herbs at the different developmental stages. We also investigate how the formation of yield quality and quantity can be manipulated by changing the light intensity and spectral composition.
We hope that these studies can contribute to develop efficient use of LED lighting technologies for plant cultivation. In addition, we want to prove that the crop yields and quality can be improved through controlling the dynamic changing light environment along the whole life cycle of plants.
Background:
The MTA Agricultural Institute has one of the largest artificial plant breeding complexes in Central Europe (Phytotron). Many phytotron chambers are equipped with LED light sources that enable to vary the light intensity and spectral composition in a wide range. Complex physiological, metabolomic (GC-MS, ion mobility, ESI-QTOF-MS, GCxGC-TOF-MS, etc.) and genomic laboratories are available for the experiments. Several papers have been published in high ranked journals, such as Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (Darko et al., 2014; 369, 20130243) and Frontiers in Plant Science (Monostori et al. 9, 605, 2018). Kovács et al. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2020, 21, 7557; doi:10.3390/ijms21207557. Ahres et al. Plants 2020, 9, 83; doi:10.3390/plants9010083,
Financial background: Galiba: OTKA K-128575; Darkó: OTKA K-131907.
Required language skills: English Recommended language skills (in Hungarian): English Further requirements: Experience in plant physiology and plant molecular biology methods.
Number of students who can be accepted: 1
Deadline for application: 2021-09-01
2024. IV. 17. ODT ülés Az ODT következő ülésére 2024. június 14-én, pénteken 10.00 órakor kerül sor a Semmelweis Egyetem Szenátusi termében (Bp. Üllői út 26. I. emelet).
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