Speaker: Katie Murphy, Danforth Plant Science Center director (phenotyping)

Title: "The Heat is on: Investigating maize stress responses with high-throughput phenotyping"

Abstract: Rising global temperatures threaten food security and crop productivity. Maize is often grown without irrigation, resulting in heat and drought stress that together account for 15 to 20 percent of crop loss worldwide. Here, we use high-throughput phenotyping to understand early vegetative growth in maize plants under abiotic stress. Using daily plant imaging and open-source image-analysis platform PlantCV, we use computer vision to measure plant growth and stress responses. This work has enabled the identification of tolerant and susceptible inbred maize lines, providing a foundation for functional studies into maize stress tolerance.

Biography: Katie Murphy is the director of phenotyping and principal investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, a nonprofit research institute in St. Louis. Her research group focuses on deploying high-throughput phenotyping technologies and applying open-source image analysis tools to understand how plants respond to stressful environmental conditions. She holds a Ph.D. in plant biology from the University of California, Davis, where she studied terpenoid production and maize stress with Dr. Philipp Zerbe, and she holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Stanford University where she studied maize anther development with Dr. Virginia Walbot. Murphy's goal is to make a secure, sustainable food supply that can withstand future climates. She shares her research on TikTok and Instagram @Real_Time_Science. 

Hosts: Marna Yandeau-Nelson, genetics, development and cell biology associate professor, and Stephanie Klein, postdoc in the Anderson lab.