PhD candidate Jiahui Gu received the 3rd poster prize at the FSPM2023 conference in Berlin, Germany

The poster presents some preliminary results from her PhD project which studies the differences between the hybrid diploid potato plants grown from two propagules (true botanical seed and seed tuber), with interests in plant architecture development both above- and below-ground. The differences in their plant architecture is mainly determined by the spatial distribution of lateral branches on the main stem. True-seed-grown plants have more branched architecture compared to tuber-grown plants. Belowground tuber size distribution is influenced by aboveground branching behaviour. The results provided more insights on the growth and development of potato plants grown from true seed and quantified their architectural differences from tuber-grown plants. This work made a solid foundation to develop a Functional-Structural Plant Model for potato plants grown from contrasting propagules, which will be used to further study the plant source-sink dynamics and their contribution to tuber production.

In silico Plants mentioned the prize winners on Twitter https://twitter.com/insilicoplants/status/1641462227482865666?s=20