To facilitate the different irrigation regimes required for drought studies and to increase the resolution and sensitivity of phenotyping, we use the automated irrigation and imaging platforms for plant phenotyping, called Phenovision. The Phenovision platform is equipped with three camera systems that enable the three-dimensional reconstruction of plants, the measurement of growth-related phenotypic characteristics, water consumption and plant physiology. With Phenovision we investigate distinct aspects of drought stress, from early signaling in drought perception to adaptive growth responses and molecular and cellular adaptations in re-watering.

We combine physiological (growth analyses in mutants or natural variants) and molecular analyses (e.g. transcript and metabolite profiling, protein-protein interactions, multiplex genome editing, single cell approaches) to investigate the mode of action of growth-promoting genes and to identify new potential growth regulators. We have identified and studied several growth-promoting genes and are now further investigating their function as well as their targets and/or interacting proteins to expand the growth regulatory network. While much research is being done on individual genes that influence leaf size, we are investigating the connections between the various molecular players of the different processes that drive leaf growth to build an integrated growth regulatory network. To increase the effectiveness in finding complex gene combinations that influence maize growth, our team is collaborating with the Innovative Breeding team to combine "classical" breeding with multiplex genome editing of yield-related genes.