Thesis supervisor: Gábor Galiba
co-supervisor: Éva Darkó
Location of studies (in Hungarian): Martonvásár Abbreviation of location of studies: MA
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, especially leafy and vegetables plants 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 and various metabolic processes. Among other, we study the light-dependent changes of photosynthetic processes, pigment composition, primary (protein and carbohydrate composition) and secondary metabolites (phenols, polyphenols) and antioxidants (glutathione, vitamin C and tocopherol). 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 leafy plants, vegetables and herbs at the different developmental stages. We also investigate how the formation of flavours can be manipulated by changing the 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.
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). The PhD students can join to the above mentioned research.
Required language skills: English Number of students who can be accepted: 1
Deadline for application: 2019-08-31
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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