Doctor Sachin Chavan

• View Sachin's Research Profile

Sachin Chavan joined HIE as a postgraduate student in August 2014 and has been working as a research fellow since January 2018. His research focuses on plant physiology and biochemistry mainly in crop plants. He is currently working as post-doctoral research fellow in greenhouse horticulture on the project entitled ‘Research and operations to trial innovation glass and photovoltaic technologies in protected cropping’ with Prof David Tissue. The project aims to assess the impact of innovative glass technologies including smart glass (SG) and semi-transparent photovoltaic glass (STPVG) on plant growth, physiology, yield and metabolic quality in a controlled CO₂, temperature, nutrient and irrigation environment. The project involves use of novel cover materials including light shifting Luminescent Light Emitting Agriculture Film (LLEAF) and radiation limiting Smart Glass (SG) film aimed at reducing energy and resource use in glasshouses while maintaining or improving the crop productivity.

Before starting this position, he studied wheat responses to climate change parameters including heat stress and elevated CO₂. He completed his PhD project entitled “Responses of wheat photosynthesis and yield to elevated CO₂ under heat and water stress” under the supervision of Assoc Prof Oula Ghannoum and Ass Prof Remko Duursma here in HIE. The PhD project aimed at combining FACE and glasshouse studies in order to develop mechanistic models that can incorporate crop leaf-to-canopy responses to stresses and their interactions with elevated CO₂. The focus was to analyse the effects of elevated CO₂ in combination with heat or water stresses on the photosynthesis and growth of field-grown (AGFACE, Horsham) and glasshouse-grown wheat cultivars.

His previous research projects included investigation of plant pathogen interactions using genetics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics tools and molecular characterisation of cotton using molecular markers.

Areas of Research

Plant physiology, biochemistry, molecular biology and genetics

Awards

• Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry Postgraduate Research Scholarship, University of Western Sydney (2014) for PhD project.
• INSPIRE Fellowship awarded by Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India