PhD Candidate, Centre for Carbon Water and Food, Faculty of Agriculture and Environment
The University of Sydney
As an ASPS travel grant recipient I was able to attend ComBio 2015 to present research from a collaborative project between the University of Sydney and Forschungszentrum Jülich. The mobile nuclear magnetic resonance sensor (mNMR) recently developed at the Bio- and Geosciences Research Institute (IBG-2) at Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany allows the non-invasive, real-time measurement of water status and dry matter accumulation during seed development. My PhD research focuses on the impact of drought and nutrient deficiency on photosynthetic capacity in common bean and the conversion of this energy into yield, particularly the nutritional quality of yield. Plant phenotyping technologies have an important role to play in this area and are evolving quickly to provide real time information about plant growth and development. It is an exciting field and it was great to share my research with the scientific community at ComBio.
The conference helped me improve my confidence and communication skills through having interesting discussions with other researchers about the future applications of the mNMR sensor technology. I am now determined to write up a manuscript sooner rather than later! Being exposed to a broad scope of research presented at COMBIO that is beyond what I would normally explore has made me excited about the possibilities awaiting me as a young member of the Australian plant science community. I am very grateful to the Australian Society of Plant Scientists for providing an opportunity to travel to ComBio in 2015.
