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The importance of leaf traits for gas film retention
The MSc thesis work of Christopher Steiness is strongly linked to the aims of Climate-smart African rice as he is searching for leaf traits that can enhance the leaf gas film retention time of rice. Christopher will visit IRRI as part of his thesis work to obtain enough genotypes to run his GWAS.
It has been long known that leaf gas films greatly enhance the underwater photosynthesis of terrestrial plants during submergence. The higher photosynthesis under water is due to the enhanced exchange of carbon dioxide with the surrounding floodwater. The gas film forms on the superhydrophobic leaf cuticles of rice, but hydrophobicity is lost during the time course of submergence, and at present we do not know exactly why.
Christopher is investigating the importance of leaf morphological traits for gas film retention time with the ultimate goal of improving the submergence tolerance of rice by breeding for functional leaf traits. We cannot reveal exactly which traits he is focusing on, but he is doing a tremendous job analyzing leaf cross-sections of a large number of genotypes. The work is tedious and we are currently trying to reduce some of the manual work by employing AI in the data analysis; time will show if we are successful.