Lucas arrived from Buenos Aires in April 2019 and has already now completed his PhD thesis work with me. He submitted on time on the last day of May and on the 4th of August, he defended the work in front of an international assessment committee.

Since Lucas published his first paper in New Phytologist reporting that the root barrier to radial oxygen loss also restricts water loss, we have been trying to evaluate its importance for drought tolerance.

Dr Guillermo Toro is currently visiting from San Santiago, Chile. Guillermo is working with the potential of using landraces of Lagenaria siceraria to improve root stocks in horticultural production with special emphasis on water melon.

We are currently hosting Hui Xiao from the post harvest group in KU Leuven, Belgium. Hui is working on oxygen distribution in tomato fruits and she is visiting our group to verify the interesting finding of her model.

Few people think of grasses as flowering plants. However, grasses belong to some of the most advanced (in evolutionary terms) flowering plants and are closely related to orchids. See this blog post for examples of very nice rice flowers.