Potential of Quinoa as a salt tolerant crop

This project is part of the project ‘Saline Agriculture as a Strategy to Adapt to Climate Change’. The PhD project will investigate the salt tolerance of different Quinoa varieties and provide answers to the questions which plant traits make one variety more tolerant than others and which climate and soil conditions lead to higher or lower sensitivities to high salt concentrations in the soil pore water. Therefore, experiments will be conducted in the lab (growth chambers), in greenhouses, and in the field. Rhizosheet experiments with plants grown on rhizosheet papers in growth chambers and crossing salinity level x variety x transpirational demand will be used to quantify root processes in presence of saline conditions (e.g. uptake vs exclusion of salts, reduced root growth in presence of salt). To evaluate the effect of variety, soil texture, soil salinity level (from salt-intrusion/effluent use) and transpirational demand on salt tolerance, pot experiments in greenhouses will be carried out. These experiments will be used to develop and parameterize a functional structural plant model of quinoa that describes mechanistically water and salt uptake by the plant roots and water flow and salt transport within the plant taking into account plant physiological adaptations to ion transport in saline conditions. The latter is an important factor often not accounted for currently for saline conditions in plant modelling. The model will be validated against data obtained from field experiments under different climate conditions. Finally, simulations with the model will be used to assess performance of quinoa under saline conditions and different climate conditions.