We seek to identify how plants sense variations in their environments, how this information is transmitted and how it is integrated into responses that impact on plant morphogenesis and architecture, resource acquisition and use for growth.

This information will be key to the engineering of plants tailored to specific environments and to an intelligent management of biological diversity in environments of the future.

Our research integrates across levels of biological organisation, from sub-cellular structures to the whole plant, even to the canopy. We combine molecular-genetic approaches, with developmental and biophysical approaches, along with mathematical modelling so as to examine and quantify the interplay of genetic and physiological mechanisms and their modulation by the environment, towards identifying strategies for improved plant stress tolerance and growth efficiency.

Current Research

Professor Graham Farquhar's team: Coordination of CO2 fixation and transpiration in plants - Biophysics of CO2 and water exchange between plants-soil and atmosphere.

We seek to understand and model interactions between plants and their environment, with an emphasis on mechanisms involved in scaling up from cell to whole plant and ecosystem. Our studies combine practical experimentation in the laboratory and the field with an extensive use of biophysical and stable isotope ratio techniques, to mechanistic mathematical modelling.

Dr John Evans's team: Physiology of photosynthesis; interactions with nitrogen.

We study leaf physiology, relating anatomy and protein allocation to photosynthesis. We are also examining whole plant responses to rising CO2 concentration, particularly the effect on symbiotic nitrogen fixation.

Dr Josette Masle's team: Molecular- and eco- physiology of root:shoot communication, stress sensing and plant development under abiotic stresses.

Roots have evolved sensitive sensing mechanisms of variations in their environment and effective local and long-distance signalling mechanisms. We study the sensing and signalling in plants of root mechanical impedance, a condition inevitably associated to soil drought. We examine the developmental and functional responses it triggers in roots and leaves, their regulation and adaptive significance. Our studies combine molecular genetics and genomic approaches to developmental biology and whole plant physiology.

Dr Michael Roderick's team:

FACILITIES

Facilities within the group include staff and workshops for experimental design and making supporting equipment, as well as four stable isotope mass spectrometers in the stable isotope facility.

Reports, Publications and News

TECHNICAL & OTHER REPORTS

Technical Report:  Maximum Entropy Production (MEP) & the Earth's Climate

Technical Report Diagrams: MEP

Technical Report:  LWA 49

Technical Report:  CSIRO Land and Water Science Report 26/07

Proceedings of Australian Academy of Science National Committee for Earth System Science Workshop  22-23 November 2004 "Pan evaporation:  An example of the detection and attribution of trends in climate variables."

• The pan evaporation paradox – an overview of the scope of the problem.
  Graham D. Farquhar & Michael L. Roderick pp 20-21
• An analysis of pan evaporation changes in relation to possible explanatory factors. Michael L. Roderick & Graham D. Farquhar pp 79-81

Global Change Newsletter 69, 32-23 "Evaporative demand: Does it increase with global warming?"  Roger M Gifford, Michael L Roderick and Graham D Farquhar

PUBLICATIONS

2008 Publications

2007 Publications

For publications in previous years please refer to the appendices sections in the Annual Reports listed under Publications on the main RSBS page.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Global Dimming-Brightening and Pan Evaporation Bibliography

• PDF Version
• Word Version
• EndNote  V6 Version

POSTERS

Is there a tradeoff between nitrogen invested in cell walls and photosynthesis?  PDF

Harrison MT, Edwards EJ, Farquhar GD, Nicotra AB and Evans JR.

Do temperature-based parameterizations of evaporative demand force overestimates of mid-latitude continental drying? PDF

Hobbins M, Farquhar G and Roderick M.

A detailed examination of oxygen isotopes toincrease the precision of leaf water modelling.  PDF

Clayton SJ, Sutart-Williams H, Harrison MT and Farquhar GD.

Carbon and oxygen isotopes: a tool to analyze the fluxes of CO2 and H2O between plants and atmosphere.  PDF

Ripullone F, Borghetti M, Cernusak L, Matsuo N, Stuart-Williams H, Wong SC, and Farquhar GD.

One-Dimesional Non-Steady-State Leaf Water Enrichment.  PDF

Cuntz M, Ogee J, Farquhar GD, Peylin P and Cernusak L.

Variation in the isotopic composition of organic matter allocated from the leaves to the roots of trees - effects of photosynthetic and post-photosynthetic carbon isotope fractionaltion.  PDF

Gessler A, Keitel, C, Kodama N, Brandes E, & Farquhar GD.

Using a Half-century of Mis-diagnosis to Make Bad Predictions about Future Drought Trends. PDF

Hobbins, M, Roderick M and Farquhar G.

NEWS

A Water Use Efficiency Gene

Prospective PhD Students

PRESS

ABC TV's Catalyst Programme 03 May 07:  Drought Wheat - getting more crop per drop

• Transcript and on-line video of the story can be found here.

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People and Contacts

Name	Role	Phone	Email
Lim, Wee	PhD Student	+61 2 6125 4822
Van Kleef, Josh	PhD Student	+61 2 6125 5091

Graham Farquhar's Team

Name	Role	Phone	Email
Clayton, Stephen	Technical Officer	+61 2 6125 4407
Farquhar, Graham	Distinguished Professor (Group Leader)	+61 2 6125 3743
Groeneveld, Peter	Technical Officer	+61 2 6125 4194
McCarthy, Michelle	Group Administrator	+61 2 6125 5052
Stuart-Williams, Hilary	Research Officer	+61 2 6125 2099
Wong, Chin	Research Officer	+61 2 6125 0320

John Evans' Team

Name	Role	Phone	Email
Evans, John	Senior Fellow	+61 2 6125 4492
Harrison, Matthew	PhD Student	+61 2 6246 4892
McCaffery, Stephanie	Technical Officer	+61 2 6125 4492
Tazoe, Youshi	Postdoctoral Fellow	02 6125 8144

Josette Masle's Team

Name	Role	Phone	Email
Berkowitz, Oliver	Postdoctoral Fellow	+61 2 6125 4549
David, Rakesh	PhD Student	+61 2 6125 2406
Jost, Ricarda	Postdoctoral Fellow	+61 2 6125 4549
Landgren, Emma	Technical Officer	+61 2 6125 0123
Liang, Lu	Postdoctoral Fellow	+61 2 6125 2404
Masle, Josette	Fellow	+61 2 6125 4410
Matthews, Peter	Technical Officer	+61 2 6125 8145
Qiu, Deyun	Postdoctoral Fellow	+61 2 6125 2406
Salari, Hooman	PhD Student	+61 2 6125 2406
Schulze, Keith	PhD Student	+61 2 6125 2406
Zsögön, Agustin	PhD Student	+61 2 6125 2406

Michael Roderick's Team

Name	Role	Phone	Email
Donohue, Randall	PhD Student	+61 2 6246 5803
Hobbins, Michael	Postdoctoral Fellow	6125-2447
Roderick, Michael	Fellow	+61 2 6125 5589
Van Niel, Thomas	PhD Student	08 - 9333 6705

Visiting Fellows

Name	Role	Phone	Email
Cowan, Ian	Visiting Fellow	+61 2 6125 5052
Dunin, Frank	Visiting Fellow	+61 2 6125 2406
Keitel, Claudia	Visiting Fellow	+61 2 6125 3696
Kriedemann, Paul	Adjunct Professor	+61 2 6125 4407
Lloyd, Jon	Visiting Fellow	+61 2 6125 2099
Paltridge, Garth	Visiting Fellow	+61 2 6125 5052
Thibier, Catherine	Visiting Fellow	+61 2 6125 2406

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Student Opportunities

NEW Prospective PhD Students in this group

• Available Student Opportunities
• Graduate Projects
• Honours Projects
• Summer Research Scholarship Projects

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Facilities

Professor’s Farquhar lab has developed analytical techniques for stable isotope research in plants (C, O and H) and is running a stable isotope facility with four isotope ratio mass spectrometers. Analysis using these machines is available on a contract basis or for cooperative research, both inside and outside ANU.

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Seminar Series

A weekly seminar series is presented by group members, visitors and invited speakers.

When:        Every Wednesday (unless otherwise notified)
Where:       Robertson Seminar Room, RSBS, ANU

                  (Map: http://campusmap.anu.edu.au/largemap.asp - Bldg 46, E4)

Time:          4pm

Contact:     For more information on these seminars, contact Dr Oliver Berkowitz on  

                   6125-4549 or Olver.Berkowitz@anu.edu.au

LATEST SEMINAR :

Wednesday 02 July 2008

Speaker:   Dr Michael Roderick

                  Environmental Biology Group, RSBS

Venue:       Faculty Boardroom

Discussing: All you wanted to know about Climate Sensitivity and the

                    greenhouse effect but were afraid to ask

Synopsis:   Climate sensitivity is a term used by scientists to express how sensitive they think the surface temperature is to changing greenhouse gas concentrations. It is central to understanding the greenhouse effect. The latest IPCC assessment report gives the climate sensitivity as 3 degrees for a doubling of carbon dioxide. However, peer-reviewed scientific papers give a range from a low of about 1 degree up to 10 degrees or more! Why is the range so large?

Surely it can be experimentally tested. ……

This seminar will answer these questions and more ……

PREVIOUS SEMINARS :

Wednesday 18June 2008

Speaker:   Dr Thomas Buckley, CSIRO

Venue:       Robertson Seminar Room

Discussing: If trees were smarter, I wouldn't have any interesting results

Synopsis:   I gave a talk in the EB seminar series a few years ago entitled "If trees were smarter, they could grow forever." Turns out they might actually be pretty stupid. My colleagues and I have collected two years of sapflow data -- every 30 minutes, day and night -- for 22 trees (half alpine ash, half snowgum) at four sites in the high country near Falls Creek, Victoria, together with local environmental data (VPD, wind speed, soil moisture, etc.). Sapflow continued at night for all trees, averaging between 6 and 54 % of daytime rates for different trees (the average for all trees was 17.6%). Accepting at face value the statistical sleights of hand that I'll used to argue this is really transpiration, and not just refilling of trunk water storage, then the obvious question is, why are they transpiring all that water at night?

Wednesday 03 June 2008

Speaker:   Dr Michael Roderick

                  Environmental Biology Group, RSBS

Venue:       Robertson Seminar Room

Discussing: Kangaroo Island - A journey.

Synopsis:   This talk is strictly non-scientific.  Mike will share some impressions of his last visit to Kangaroo Island.

Wednesday 14 May 2008

Speaker:   Dr John JS Boyer
                  Du Pont Professor of Biochemistry/Biophysics,

                  Emeritus, University of Delaware

Venue:       Robertson Seminar Room

Discussing: Molecular mechanism of cell enlargement and wall biosynthesis in

                    plants

Synopsis:    Cells enlarge by expanding the walls, which are synthesized simultaneously. But the specific molecular site of the process was elusive, and the link to wall biosynthesis unknown. Our recent work identified a site for molecular expansion that leads stoichiometrically to new wall deposition. The expansion involves a unique chemistry of pectin in the walls caused by deformation, which interacts with pectin being delivered by the cytoplasm.

Wednesday 16 April 2008

Speaker:   Dr Hilary Stuart-Williams
                  Environmental Biology Group, RSBS

Venue:       Robertson Seminar Room

Discussing: What are Isoscapes?

Synopsis:    They sound like adventure holidays for tired lab workers, but sadly they are just more work ...

    Isoscapes are a subset of datascapes: surfaces representing measured parameters over large areas.  They are the surfaces from which all samples originate.  For example the composition of water in a leaf relates to the composition of precipitation at the growing location, convoluted by temperature, humidity, plant type, soil type etc.  At the moment most isoscapes fall well short of expectations: the quantity and quality of data available requires unreasonable amounts of interpolation between locations of interest and real samples. Typically models are used to bridge these shortfalls.

The isotope community requires much better quality isoscapes to use as inputs into models explaining the behaviour of smaller systems.  For example it is difficult to model the behaviour of our pet leaf without understanding the baselines of the inputs.  At the moment the precipitation isoscape is one of the best.  Having said that, Australia is defined by the major coastal cities and Alice Springs!  We won't mention Tasmania.

    One of the problems that haunts the creators of isoscapes is deciding exactly what the isoscape should represent.  For example, is it average precipitation over the year, or weighted precipitation, or precipitation only from June?  Or worse yet, western Canada gets weather systems from the Gulf or the Atlantic with greatly differing values.  How do you put them on one map?

So isoscapes remain a bit of a fairy tale.  They are to real data what GCM's are to weather.  So, in this spirit of defeat, I offer a few crumbs of data and ramblings gleaned from unwilling donors at the conference I recently attended: marine life, salmon, deuterium in the atmosphere from satellites and our little feathered friends.

Wednesday 09 April 2008

Speaker:   Dr Michael Hobbins
                  Environmental Biology Group, RSBS

Venue:       Robertson Seminar Room

Discussing: Revisiting potential evaporation parameterizations as drivers of long-term water balance trends

Synopsis:  In an ongoing study of long-term drought dynamics, our goal is to examine the paradigm that holds global warming responsible for predicted drying in mid-latitude continental interiors. In conducting the study, we hope to embarrass the hydroclimatologic community into abandoning its simple-minded reliance on air temperature to characterize evaporative demand.

To a large degree, the dire predictions of drying under warming rest on the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), a widely used indicator of drought extent and severity. In its traditional form, the PDSI characterizes the evaporative demand of the atmosphere--or potential evaporation (Ep)--using a simple parameterization that is a function of latitude and time of year, and that varies with air temperature alone. With global warming, these estimates of Ep must rise, but this contradicts observations of Ep from Class-A evaporation pans, which have been declining in many regions around the world.

In this talk, I will summarize our comparison of long-term trends in soil moisture, evaporative flux and runoff simulated by the PDSI’s water balance model when it is forced by the two parameterizations of Ep: the first being the traditional parameterization based on air temperature alone, and the second derived from observations of evaporation from class-A pans. I will show that the predicted hydrologic trends depend not only on the Ep-parameterization used but also whether the study area is water- or energy-limited.

Wednesday 02 April 2008

VODCAST:   Dr Gerald Pollack
                    University of Washington

Venue:       Robertson Seminar Room

Discussing: Water, Energy and Life:  Fresh Views From the Water's Edge

Synopsis:   Dr. Gerald Pollack, UW professor of bioengineering, has developed a theory of water that has been called revolutionary. The researcher has spent the past decade convincing worldwide audiences that water is not actually a liquid. Pollack explains his fascinating theory in this 32nd Annual Faculty Lecture.  

Wednesday 05 March 2008

Speaker:     Dr Deyun Qui
                     Environmental Biology Group, RSBS

Venue:       Robertson Seminar Room

Discussing: Functional characterization and regulatory analysis of a rice WRKY transcription factor, OsWRKY13

Synopsis:   Although 109 WRKY genes have been identified in the rice genome, the functions of most are unknown. Here we show that OsWRKY13 plays a pivotal role in rice disease resistance. Overexpression of OsWRKY13 can enhance rice resistance to bacterial blight and fungal blast, two of the most devastating diseases of rice worldwide, at both the seedling and adult stages. This overexpression was accompanied by the activation of salicylic acid (SA) synthesis-related genes and SA-responsive genes and the suppression of jasmonic acid (JA) synthesis-related genes and JA-responsive genes. OsWRKY13 bound to the promoters of its own and at least three other genes in SA- and JA-dependent signalling pathways. Its DNA-binding activity was influenced by pathogen infection. These results suggest that OsWRKY13, as an activator of the SA-dependent pathway and a suppressor of JA-dependent pathways, mediates rice resistance by directly or indirectly regulating the expression of a subset of genes acting both upstream and downstream of SA and JA. Furthermore, genome-wide analysis of the expression profiles of OsWRKY13-overexpressing lines suggests that OsWRKY13 directly or indirectly regulates the expression of more than 500 genes that are potentially involved in different physiologic processes according to the classification of the Gene Ontology database.

Wednesday 27 February 2008

Speaker:     Dr Hilary Stuart-Williams

                     Environmental Biology Group, RSBS 

Discussing: What I did on my summer holidays and why are ants as big as elephants?

Synopsis:    Recently my time has been dominated by practical issues such as producing analyses before the clients put a price on my head.  Consequently I have little research to talk about apart from fixing immediate problems.  So when called upon to give a seminar I'm falling back on a slide show of my recent visit to Canada.  I spent a month in November and December near the massive Opinaca Reservoir east of James Bay in Quebec.  Opinaca is part of the huge James Bay hydro project which captures energy from the substantial amount of water (mostly from melting snow) that flows off the Canadian Shield into Hudson Bay.  Perversely (as usual) I was involved in a project exploring for economic concentrations of uranium which has increasing value in the current anti-carbon climate.  I'll show photos of the countryside and the work and talk VERY briefly about the prospect and geology.

If time permits, I then want to wander into the more curious relationship between size, celestial accident and the way that things are in our World.  What is the relationship between John Howard (whoever he was) and the size of our planet? How is DNA related to Mount Everest?  Why are ants the same size as elephants in so many ways? Clearly my knowledge of the world is inadequate to answer these questions ... so the audience will have plenty of opportunity to contribute!

Wednesday 20 February 2008

Speaker:     Dr Lu Liang
                     Environmental Biology Group, RSBS

Discussing: Approaching plants biochemically and cellularly

Synopsis:    Plants differ from animals in their fixed living and thus provide a good model system for analyses of life’s responses to the environment. We used biochemical tools to understand the biology and physiology of Arabidopsis thaliana in response to UV radiation. Additionally, the split-GFP technique was used to localize cell-type specific protein expression driven by particular promoters.

Wednesday 13 February 2008

Speaker:     Dr Nijat Imin

                     Genomic Interactions Group, RSBS 

Discussing: An investigation of cold induced pollen sterility in rice

Synopsis:    A major agricultural limitation to rice production in southern Australia irrigation areas has been low mid-season temperatures. A few as two days of low temperature (<20ºC) during pollen development can cause irreversible pollen sterility and up to 40% reduction in yields. However, the molecular mechanism of this cold induced pollen sterility is not well understood. We have used a technique called proteomics to examine the changes in protein accumulation after cold treatment and identified a small set of proteins as candidates that regulate stress-induced pollen sterility. I will present and discuss these findings in the context of male gametophyte development.

Wednesday 06 February 2008

Speaker:     Dr Stephan Pollman

                   Dept. of Plant Physiology,
                     Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany

Discussing: Auxin, a key-regulator in plant growth and development: biosynthesis and induction in response to octadecanoids and wounding

Synopsis:    In the talk, I will focus on two different core issues of my group in Germany. Firstly, I would like to give an overview about our attempts to elucidate the still controversially discussed auxin biosynthetic pathways. In particular, I will concentrate on the functional and physiological characterization of an indole-3-acetamide dependent branch of IAA production in the plant kingdom. Secondly, I would like to share with you our most recent progress on octadecanoid-induced auxin biosynthesis in Arabidopsis thaliana

Wednesday 06 February 2008

Speaker:     Randall Donohue

                   PhD Candidate, Environmental Biology, RSBS            and CSIRO Land and Water

Discussing: Interpreting vegetation change in a thermodynamic framework

Synopsis:    The response of vegetation to changing climatic conditions is likely to differ between energy-limited and water-limited environments and between vegetation functional types (tree/grass for example).  Vegetation is tightly linked to the primary hydrologic drivers—precipitation and evaporative demand— and in order to make predictions of the influence of a changing climate, we must first understand the ecohydrologic dynamics.  Added to this is the effect of an increasingly CO2–rich atmosphere where vegetation is expected to respond directly to changes in atmospheric [CO2], potentially altering hydrologic regimes, even in the absence of changes in the primary hydrologic drivers.

By incorporating satellite-based measures of vegetation with hydro-meteorological observations across Australia, in this talk I will examine how vegetation has responded to climatic changes over the past 25 years.  In particular, I will:

-         report how Australia's vegetation has changed over the study period;

-         interpret these changes in the energy-water limitation framework;

-         demonstrate how two main vegetation functional types have responded differentially to climatic changes; and

-         present a ‘first cut’ attempt to quantify the effect of elevated [CO2] on vegetation across Australia.

Click here for details of other previous seminars.

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