On the 22nd of October, our lab was on Dutch national television. In the VPRO series ‘Grote Vragen’ (big questions) by Stephane Kaas, presenter Rob van Hattum follows eight different scientists, focussing on the questions that drive their research. In the episode about Christa, we follow her to England, where Charles Darwin described plant movements already in the 19th century and found out which part of the plant senses light. We end up in the Philippines where Christa and Ronald visit the IRRI research institute, which aims to make rice more salt- and drought tolerant and Golden Rice accessible for everyone. Of course Christa explains the work we do in our team, the questions we are trying to answer
- How do plants sense salt?
- How do they adapt their root growth when growing in saline soil?
- How can we make plants more tolerant to salt?
and you will see several lab members in action in our Wageningen lab! Finally, together with Norbert Peeters, Christa highlights the concept of plant blindness. We hope this episode opens some eyes.
You can still watch the series here. Also: more background about Christa, our research and the other topics in the documentary (in Dutch) at the VPRO Grote Vragen website .
Roots in Salt 