Monocot Grafting

Grafting is the horticultural practice of fusing two plants so that they grow as one. Nearly all perennial orchard crops (i.e., apple, cherry, pecan, grape, rose, olive, citrus, maple, etc) are grafted commercially.

However, this ancient and widespread agricultural practice had not been applied to the monocotyledons, which represent the second largest group of terrestrial plants and include many staple cereal crops.

Pallavi Singh's recent postdoctoral work at University of Cambridge overturned the consensus dating back thousands of years that grasses and related species do not graft. The research identified that the hypocotyl (mesocotyl in grasses) as a meristematic tissue allowing grafting.

In the seminar, Pallavi will outline the process of monocot grafting and our current mechanistic understanding of formation of graft union. She will also discuss how these findings open-up grafting as a research tool to understand plant physiology, development, and genetics in numerous cereal model systems. In particular, engineering crops to uncouple roots from shoots provides an opportunity to combat newly emerging and threatening challenges to elite cereal crops.

One of the first set of experiments, by her research group at University of Essex, will test the hypothesis that cereal grafting could offer a way to develop specialized root systems tailored to limited soil water. This uncoupling of the two systems, will enable us to better understand different aspects of root/shoot hydraulics and its interplay in facilitating water use in cereal crops.