Qualifications and Achievement:    

RESEARCH INTERESTS

The long term research line is aimed at the application of in vivo NMR techniques to study water relations and transport processes in intact plants and living biosystems. Pioneering work in this area has led to a number of results, demonstrating that the group was the first to apply NMR for water balance studies on intact plants. In addition, an unique "portable" NMR spectrometer has been realised. The group has highly contributed on developing novel experimental NMR techniques to measure and interpret physical parameters such as relaxation times, (self)diffusion coefficient and flow in relation to (cell) water balance, cell compartmentation and membrane permeability.

In combination with NMR microscopy we have now entered the fascinating area of functional imaging of intact plants, agricultural products and (bio)porous systems.

Current research projects focus on NMR imaging of:

1. Mechanism of drought tolerance in maize and pearl millet studied by functional NMR imaging and leaf fluorescence

2. Functioning of water pathways in cut flowers

3. Residual water in desiccating plant systems and its impact on metabolism and spatial structure

4. Transport processes in packed beds (HPLC, CEC column) and bioreactors, (artificial) soils, root/soil systems,

Related projects are currently running under the EU large scale facility terms (Wageningen NMR Centre, WnmrC)

Further development of NMR imaging techniques for the quantitative measurement of water fluxes (xylem and phloem) in stem, petioles and leaves at a time resolution which is physiologically acceptable (< 8 min) and corroborate these NMR results by other independent techniques to monitor plant physiology and development under normal and abiotic stress conditions. In addition, NMR imaging techniques will be developed to study metabolite (e.g. sucrose) distrubitions and its (phloem) transport.

These NMR imaging techniques offer exciting new possibilities for the physiological mapping of whole plants to a high spatial and temporal resolution. They will be applied to study unanswered questions about plant productivity and (abiotic) stress responses, and to open up unsurpassed new ways for understanding the relationships between growth, productivity, stress tolerance and competitiveness of (transgenic) plants.

It is extremely important to perform these studies on intact plants under well controlled environmental conditions. Therefore the development of a new whole-plant NMR system (provided with a vertical 70 cm i.d. bore 3 T magnet, and a mini-phytotron that fits in it) will play a central role in this research, in combination with already existing NMR equipment. This system is expected to be installed in the second half of 2001.

EPS course Plant Biophysics

EPS course Biological Spectroscopy

International PhD student course in vivo NMR, 1996, 1998, 2000