Plant Resilience Under Climate Threats
During the 21st century Climate change and Food sustainability will reach the point of maximum danger. The Challenges represented by the impact of climate change on the terrestrial biosphere and its repercussions for supplying food to the projected 9-10 billions people worldwide by 2050 will be unprecedented. On the one hand, food yields should continue increasing to keep with population growth. On the other hand, plant species will have to adapt to the fast changes in climate and increase their resilience to pest, temperature and water limitations. These environmental changes are already threatening crop yield but their long-term impact on ecosystems and food productivity remains unclear. My general interest lies in the biochemical and physiological resilience of plants to these environmental stresses. In particular, I am interested in understanding how kinetics regulation and substrate requirements of key enzymatic processes define plant productivity and control their survival. These key enzymatic processes are essential to accurately predict current and future impact of climate change on ecosystem productivity and biogeochemical as well as defining new target for crop improvements in their future resilience to Climate variabilities.
My research combines theoretical and empirical approaches to disentangle the complexity of plant metabolic pathway. The empirical approach includes field measurements in temperate and sub-arctic deciduous ecosystems as well as greenhouse environmental manipulation. The theoretical approach includes assessment of current Terrestrial ecosystems models' limitations and design and sensitivity-tests of new parameterizations for respiratory CO2 production.
To investigate how to takle the needs of a growing population for healthy and locally grown food, I developped the Princeton Vertical Farming Project. This project aims to present vertical farming as part of the solution and to re-establish the connection between the growing industry of Vertical Farms and Academic Research. We investigate multi-aspect of vertical farms sustainability on the business development side but also engineering, environmental and biological sides.
Associated Websites
Princeton Vertical Farming Project
Princeton Plant Biology Website
Current projects:
Improving the representation of Photosynthesis and Respiration in GFDL Land Model
Mechanistic representation of Leaf Area Index (LAI) control within plant canopy
Investigating the carbon footprint of vertical farms: a Life Cycle Assessment for future self Sustained Home
The origin and intensity of the break in the Kok effect
Multispecies comparison of leaf photosynthetic and respiration capacity
Photosynthetic Light limitation as a target for future yield improvement
Past Projects
2015-2017
Shedding Light on the benefit of Mycorrhizal network to improve plant resilience to pests
Trees Biodiversity and resilience to climate change
2012-2015
Environmental stable Isotopes as tool and research target
Designing new tools for Plant Physiology Measurements
Teaching Advanced data processing in Jupyter Notebook: Princeton University Python Community
Current Lab members
Luqman Issah '21 - Princeton Vertical Farming Project
Beimnet Shitaye '20 - Princeton Vertical Farming Project
Kor Akiti '19 - Princeton Vertical Farming Project
Heather Waters '20 - Princeton Vertical Farming Project
Natalie Grayson '20 - Princeton Vertical Farming Project
Kyra Gregory '19 - Princeton Vertical Farming Project
Current collaborators
Stephen Pacala - Princeton University
Kevin Griffin - Columbia University
Elena Shevliakova - NOAA
Sergey Malyshev - NOAA
Kelly Caylor - UC Santa Barbara
Cynthia Gerlein-Safdi - University of Michigan
Former Students
Manolya Adan (Imperial College, London), Rozalie Czesana '18, Jesenia Haynes '18, Aamir Zainulabadeen '18, Olivia Trase '17, Natalie Saenz '15, Jordan Lubkeman '16, Atleigh Forden '16, Alana Reynolds '18, Jackie Jones '18, Jacob Eisenberg '16, Ethan Vasquez '16, Joseph Redmond '18
"Do all you can with what you have in the time you have in the place you are!" Xolani Nkosi