Into the wild: approaches to understand plants' ionome and for crop biofortification

Title: Into the wild: approaches to understand plants' ionome and for crop biofortification

Speaker: Dr. Felipe Klein Ricachenevsky

From: Departamento de Botânica e Centro de Biotecnologia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brasil

Abstract: The ionome is defined as the inorganic composition of organisms, organs, tissues, individual cells and even organelles. In plants, understanding the ionome and how its interactions are regulated is key for plant nutrition, as we can increase our nutrient use efficiency, as well as human nutrition, since we get our nutrients from plants. I will show how we have been working to identify and characterize important genes in Arabidopsis thaliana and rice that are involved in controlling iron and zinc transport and accumulation, how that affects plant physiology and interactions with other elements. We will also discuss new approaches to identify genes that control the ionome in rice plants as well as how we are using crop wild relatives aiming at biofortification.