Under the supervision of Minnie Leong (minnie.leong@wur.nl)

Aim: Understand why root grow away from high salt gradient

This project mainly concerns the physiological relevance of Halotropism, which describes the phenomenon of root growing away from high salt gradient [1]. We will be measuring how much salt plant is experiencing during the process and how much of the sodium ions is taken up by the plants. The major part of experiments will be carried out with Arabidopsis seedlings, but the second part of project will be carried out using Tomato seedlings in plate and soil rhizotron settings.

It is preferred that you have an interest in plant physiology and willing to learn related wet-lab techniques (specifically Halotropism). You should preferably also taken one off the following courses: PPH30306 Molecular Concepts of Plant Resilience, PPH30806 Plant Plasticity and Adaptation, or another pre-requisite for a thesis.

Further reading:

[1] Galvan-Ampudia, Carlos S., et al. “Halotropism is a response of plant roots to avoid a saline environment.” Current Biology 23.20 (2013): 2044-2050.