Research Interests (300 words)
My work focuses to improve plant roots for more productive and stress tolerant crops. Specifically, my projects involve investigating the functional utility of barley root anatomical phenotypes in drought and nutrient stress environments. Using targeted physiological research, we characterize stress tolerance and variation in root cortical traits in barley.
My work combines a variety of technologies to study the effect of root anatomy on water uptake, nutrient uptake, and root metabolic costs. We grow plants in the greenhouse and field and study root traits using histology methods, MRI technology, and SimRoot simulation studies.