As the planet heats up, plant scientists are racing to find drought-tolerant crop varieties in order to protect global food security. Professor Brodersen has invented a device that should speed up this process. Called the cavitation bubble manometer (CBM), it measures the turgor, or water pressure, inside leaves and roots. Changing cell turgor is a key way that plants react to environmental conditions. The device allows for scores of measurements each day—a vast improvement over current technologies that make 1-2 measurements daily. With this grant, researchers will use the CBM to lay the groundwork for studies of how plants respond to and recover from drought, plus screen crop varieties for the ones that perform best.
Participants
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Joseph Manning
William K. and Marilyn Milton Simpson Professor of Classics and History, Professor Yale School of the Environment, and Senior Research Scholar in Law
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Jennifer R. Marlon
Senior Research Scientist, Lecturer and Director of Data Science; Executive Director, Center for Geospatial Solutions; Lecturer, Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
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Selga Medenieks
Associate Research Scholar, MacMillan Center
