Bionote
Hannah Schneider is a root biologist and holds a joint position leading the ‘Genetics and Physiology of Root Development’ research group at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) and is a professor at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. She received her BSc from the University of Minnesota and her PhD from Pennsylvania State University. Using both genetic and physiological approaches her work aims to understand root anatomical and architectural adaptations of crop plants to drought and low fertility environments.
Presentation Abstract
In Poaceae, several root anatomical tissues are developed from cortical parenchyma including root cortical aerenchyma, multiseriate cortical sclerenchyma, and root cortical senescence. Root phenotypes can have significant effects on soil resource acquisition by modifying the placement of roots in soil domains where limiting resources are most available, improving the metabolic efficiency of soil exploration, modifying the composition of microbiota in the rhizosphere, as well as altering the radial and axial transport of resources. We aimed to identify combinations of simultaneous of successive cortical tissues that improve plant growth. We developed an anatomical imaging pipeline to facilitate rapid root anatomy phenotyping. A phenotypic screen of root anatomy along a developmental gradient in wheat roots was conducted. We observed phenotypic variation for the formation of both multiseriate cortical sclerenchyma, a trait formed through the deposition of lignin in cortical cell walls, and root cortical senescence, a trait formed by programmed cell death of cortical cells. Our results showed that different tissues in the root cortex can interact to influence stress tolerance and plant performance. The benefit of multiseriate cortical sclerenchyma for drought tolerance depended on the successive formation of root cortical senescence. Root anatomical phenotypes present a promising yet underexploited avenue to deliver major improvements in yield and climate resilience of crops by improving water and nutrient uptake.