Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in collaborating.
Biophysical mechanisms of CO2 and water transport inside leaves
Our object is to reveal the biophysical processes (as well as their coordination) of water and CO2 movement inside leaves. Recently, two rice recombinant inbred lines were developed to identify the relative genes determining CO2 and water movement inside leaf. More information about our work can be found in our recent publications: Xiong et al., 2015, 2017a, 2017b 2018a & Wang et al., 2018.
The responses of leaf to environmental stresses
Leaf is one of the most sensitive organs in response to environmental changes including abiotic and biotic stresses. Generally, plants adapt to their local environment via adjusting anatomy (e.g. leaf mass per area (LMA), leaf density and leaf vein traits), and biochemical features such as leaf nitrogen content (N), osmolytes, & hormones. However, these adjustments will potentially impact the physiological processes such as leaf carbon assimilation and hydraulics. Revealing the responses of leaf anatomical, biochemical and physiological traits to environmental stresses, which will be more common in the future due to the global climate change, is an important issue for agriculture as well as forest ecology systems. Our aims are to (1) reveal the responses of leaf anatomy and gas exchange to variable environmental factors such as water stress, high temperature, shading and nutrition across a broad range of species; (2) construct ideal leaf anatomy of high source (light, N and water) use efficiency and stress tolerance.
Relevant Publications see Xiong et al., 2015a, 2015b,2015c, 2018b & Wang et al., 2018
The climate change & food production
The global demand for primary foodstuffs is expected to increase 70% more by 2050, driven by population growth, and demands for livestock products and biofuel. However, the annual yields of main crops are stagnating, and climate change is seriously imperiling crops productions. To clear the yield stagnation and the impact of climate change on crop production, a high-resolution global crop statistics database is constructing. I am now working with my collaborators around the world to answer the questions via “big data”.
Relevant Publications see Xiong et al., 2015a
Other topics
Broad contemplated topics are listed below.
- Plant carbon and water economics at multiple levels.
- Rice canopy (dynamic-)photosynthetic rate estimation and modeling.
- Effects of domestication on crops’ eco-physiology
- Nocturnal transpiration
- Develop new gas exchange and hydraulics estimation technics