Prof. Dave L Des Marais

Using the contextual information about the natural environment from collected data, Des Marais creates a controlled environment that includes parameters that align with the plant’s ecosystem. Des Marais is currently building plant growth chambers in CEE’s Parsons Lab, where he hopes to run parallel experiments: “In the field we can say, ‘here’s what their natural trajectory looks like under natural conditions, let’s try to understand the molecular and physiological underpinnings of that by looking at it in the lab,’” he says.

Understanding the physiology of plants and how to best utilize their responses to environmental conditions could also be useful for addressing one of the world’s most pressing problems: the increasing food demands of the growing global population.