Department of Plant Sciences, Wednesday Seminar Series
PES 3001, October 2, 2024, 12.10-1 PM
Pornpipat "Paul" Kasemsap
(Ph.D., Horticulture and Agronomy, Major Advisor: Arnold J. Bloom)
Nitrogen
fertilization of agricultural fields sustains global food security, but
less than half of the fertilizer applied reaches the table. Under
elevated CO2 levels, food production suffers from crop
protein decline and declining or stagnant yields, threatening human
nutrition worldwide. The natural variation in the ability of crops to
assimilate different soil inorganic nitrogen forms, nitrate (NO3–) and ammonium (NH4+),
into protein remains unexplored and may provide solutions to this grand
challenge. My research explores 3 major questions pertaining to wheat
and rice, staple food crops that provide 32% of the protein in the human
diet: (i) how have past genetic modifications and breeding improved
grain protein concentration and yield?, (ii) what is the extent of
natural variation in the ability to utilize different nitrogen forms for
growth and development?, (iii) how does adaptation to specific nitrogen
sources influence crop responses to changing climates?. Our work
provided strategies to guide matching crop genetic adaptations with
fertilizer management to improve nitrogen-use efficiency and to sustain
food security under the atmospheric conditions anticipated in the
future.
