“Studying plant survival strategies to withstand flooding events opens the door to produce flood-resistant crops. These will be key to ensure food security.”
Research focus: plant responses to flooding, improving the climate resilience of current crops
Rashmi Sasidharan is Professor of Plant Stress Resilience at Utrecht University. Her research focuses on studying and improving the survival mechanisms of plants. Climate change has greatly exacerbated the frequency and severity of flooding and associated crop losses, making this area of research of great importance for the (future) global food supply.
Although plant responses to flooding have been well mapped, the genes and processes that determine this enormous variation in tolerance are largely unknown. Also the molecular mechanisms underlying these survival strategies of wild species from flood prone environments are largely unexplored. Unique to Rashmi Sasidharan's research is the combination of biochemical, molecular and genomic research methods. As a result, it has been possible to identify new molecular processes and possible genes associated with plant survival strategies.
Her research is funded with grants from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. (NWO-VENI;NWO-VIDI; NWO-ALW Open Competitie; STW-OTP; EU-H2020). She also leads her own research group and teaches the course 'Plant biology and ecology ' to first-year Biology students and the course 'Food Forward ' to third-year students.
Areas of interest:
- Flood stress biology
- Plant abiotic stress
- Plant environment signaling
- Crop improvement
- Biochemistry
- Natural genetic diversity