Vivent’s Chief Scientific Officer Andrzej Kurenda has been fascinated by plants since he was a child, he studied environmental protection at university with the plan to work in this space. However, around the time he was choosing his masters thesis he discovered biophysics and electrophysiology. He was drawn to it because it was new and innovative and full of potential. He later moved from Poland to Switzerland to do a postdoc with Prof. Farmer in Lausanne in the molecular mechanism of electrical signals gaining even more depth of knowledge in this area.
“It’s amazing to me that plants have the same mechanism of excitation as animals.” says Andrzej. “Animals have developed their neurological systems in conditions of high competition, to escape from predators. Plants don't have that sort of pressure but still generate the same type of signals.” He loves that he is in a field that is pushing the boundaries of knowledge every day with the huge plus that he gets to stay close to plant science.
At the ASPB’s Plant Biology 2021 conference, Andrzej and colleague Alja van der Schuren will be presenting how the PhytlSigns technology enables scientists to monitor electrical signals. “Amazingly we can now monitor plants for months or years, through seasons and a plant’s whole lifetime. In the past we could only monitor signals for a short time and in very controlled conditions such as in a Faraday cage.”
In another few years, Andrzej envisages that he would be able to report to the ASPB on how this technology is changing the whole field of plant biology and agriculture. Electrophysiology will hopefully have become widely adopted by then by scientists and in the commercial sector.
“We still have so many discoveries to make in this field” says Andrzej, “I’m fascinated by the plant responses to biotic stress, such as an insect chewing on a leaf”.
Imagine how we can support crop protection in an environmentally responsible way with this sort of information. Watch this space ASPB!
If you are attending #PlantBiology21 and would like to get in touch with us, then please fill out this form.
