RUI: Integrating roots into whole plant phenotypes: ecological and genetic perturbations

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Complex plant phenotypes are influenced by the environment, genetics and their interactions. The root system has been largely overlooked in natural or ecologically relevant settings in the plant species Arabidopsis thaliana. An overarching goal of this project is to examine in Arabidopsis thaliana how traits and their relationships within the root, within the shoot, and between the root and shoot change across habitats in nature. In this project, natural variation of root traits and soil nutrient features in field populations will be examined and plants will be grown in varying natural ecological settings. Genetic tools will be employed to examine the effects of the disruption of single genes on root traits and their relationships with shoot traits. These data will form the largest ecological dataset for Arabidopsis roots in the field. Roots are critical to successful agriculture and may have positive or negative relationships with other agriculturally important traits. These data will therefore inform agricultural scientists on how root traits, shoot traits, and trait relationships change across environments and with genetic perturbations. This project will engage a diverse group of undergraduate students in the study of whole plant phenotypes as research apprentices, in classroom inquiry based learning, and through service learning experiences to the urban kindergarten community.