Swathy Anija Hari Kumar
Candidature
PhD Candidate
Thesis title
Influence of planting density and irrigation on crop performance of sorghum varieties
The effects of human-caused global climate change are becoming more and more apparent as we see more record-breaking heat waves, intense droughts and shifts in rainfall patterns. If plant genotypes that can withhold climate extremes are insufficient, food scarcity occurs, and the price of existing food resources would increase enormously, making it practically hard for the rural poor to obtain enough food. To avoid this happening, climate resilient plant genotypes are to be developed.
As climate change cause increasing demand on the water used by crops, Crop water use efficiency (WUE) has come into sharp focus. Greater WUE depends on several physiological processes, including, higher leaf-level intrinsic water use efficiency (iWUE), deeper roots and greater early crop vigour. WUE can also be improved by achieving greater biomass per unit water transpired. Leaf anatomical traits are potential drivers for iWUE which was related with changes in Leaf width.
Sorghum being a C4 plant has high iWUE and drought tolerance. There exists a wide range of genotypes which can be mined for useful traits.
My PhD project focusses on addressing the following objectives:
- Evaluation of promising grain sorghum varieties of South India for leaf width, yield and suitability for cultivation in Kerala.
- Determine the effect of heat and water stress on the performance of wild sorghum lines of Australia.
- Evaluate the photosynthetic responses of wild sorghum lines under water, heat, and carbon-di-oxide stress.
Supervisors
Professor Oula Ghannoum, Dr. Usha Chacko Thomas (Kerala Agricultural University, India), Dr. Javier Cano (ICIFOR)
