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1. Meta-Phenomics
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The response of plants to their environment can best be described by dose-response curves.
Unfortunately, for most plant traits these curves are not known, notwithstanding a wide range
of publications. The first target of my work is to reconstruct these dose-response curves
for a number of growth-related traits in response to 12 environmental factors.
For more information see www.metaphenomics.org.
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2. Specific leaf area (SLA)
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SLA (or alternatively LMA) is one of the important traits underlying variation in growth rate between species,
and strongly affected by various environmental factors such as light and temperature.
A second topic of interest are the factors underlying variation in SLA as well as the
genetic regulation of SLA in Arabidopsis between genotypes and at different light intensities.
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3. Growth of plants
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A 3rd point of interest is the variation in growth rate, either when comparing ecologically different
functional groups of species, or when looking at environmentally induced variation in RGR.
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4. Chemical composition and construction costs
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The last focus of attention is on the consequences of variation in chemical composition of plants.
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