Malia Gehan

The Big Questions and Goals

Improved temperature stress resistance in plants

​The world population is expected to outpace agricultural productivity by the year 2050. To rise to this global challenge we need crops that produce more yield, under increasingly variable climatic conditions. One approach to producing more yield is to identify natural variation in abiotic stress response. The Gehan lab focuses on mining natural variation for improved resistance to temperature stress, which will help to improve crops, and move towards answering how plants perceive temperature. 

Improved measurement of plant phenotypes

​To measure natural variation in temperature stress resistance, we need non-destructive tools that can quickly and accurately measure a plant trait (phenotype). Therefore, the Gehan Lab also focuses on developing new tools and methods for plant phenotyping over time.  The lab concentrates on  computational methods of measuring plant traits from images.

The Plant Systems

The Gehan lab works with a number of plant species including model grasses Brachypodium distachyon and Setaria viridis because they are closely related to important food and bioenergy crops. We also have projects on various crop species including sorghum, maize, tobacco, camelina, and pennycress. The Gehan lab also works on Chenopodium quinoa, as a model system for plant stress resilience. Quinoa is delicious and is reported to have very high tolerance to abiotic stress.