We are growing rice like never before
These days, Johan, Lucas, Max and Elisa are all working with rice – even I have been in the laboratory to assist with measurements. This week I trained Max in the art of measuring leaf gas films; he had done so before during his PhD but wanted a brush-up to make sure that the protocol had not changed in the meantime. My instruction video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mu7MiPUIEU is very useful in such a situation but some personal training is still required to avoid the pitfalls. Max managed to measure 3 species in just one day: Oryza sativa (common Asian rice), Oryza australis and Oryza glumaepatula – the latter two are wild relatives to cultivated rice.
Elisa has now managed to get her computer connected with the 5-digit Mettler-Toledo balance so that we are able to automatically measure tissue desiccation at predetermined time intervals. This is very useful indeed since the 4-digit balance had insufficient sensitivity so some of our small tissue samples.
Johan has discovered a rice species (I cannot reveal which one) that only forms a weak barrier to ROL when grown in stagnant deoxygenated nutrient solution. This is a valuable discovery since we need such a model plant for future experiments.
Lucas is making excellent progress and I think it is safe to conclude that he now has all the required data for his first publication for his PhD – at least as a first author. Earlier this week, we submitted a paper with Prof Sauter and Dr Chen from University of Kiel where Lucas is also a co-author. In conclusion, things are going well these days…
Elisa has now managed to get her computer connected with the 5-digit Mettler-Toledo balance so that we are able to automatically measure tissue desiccation at predetermined time intervals. This is very useful indeed since the 4-digit balance had insufficient sensitivity so some of our small tissue samples.
Johan has discovered a rice species (I cannot reveal which one) that only forms a weak barrier to ROL when grown in stagnant deoxygenated nutrient solution. This is a valuable discovery since we need such a model plant for future experiments.
Lucas is making excellent progress and I think it is safe to conclude that he now has all the required data for his first publication for his PhD – at least as a first author. Earlier this week, we submitted a paper with Prof Sauter and Dr Chen from University of Kiel where Lucas is also a co-author. In conclusion, things are going well these days…