Rida Faizi

Rida Faizi is the 2024 recipient of the Brewster Scholarship, which is awarded to an SLS PhD student in their second year of research whose work relates to crop improvement. The scholarship is funded by a generous donation in memory of Dr Jim Brewster, a former member of Wellesbourne staff.

Rida's PhD project title is 'Flowering time-nodulation crosstalk in Medicago truncatula'

She is supervised by Miriam Gifford

Project summary

Flowering time-nodulation crosstalk in Medicago truncatula

The project will investigate the developmental impact of clock gene mutation to ascertain whether this impacts nodulation. The genetic control of flowering time has been shown to influence nodulation in legume species. The model legume Medicago truncatula forms symbiotic relationships with rhizobial bacteria, housing the bacteria in specialised root nodules, and using the ammonia the bacteria produce in exchange for carbon provision. This is beneficial to the plants and in agriculture, this brings increased crop yields and the ability to grow crops in nitrogen-poor soil. A better understanding of the interaction between plant and the bacteria they house could lead to more sustainable food production by reducing the need for fertilisers.

Previous work at Warwick has shown that disruption of a key clock regulatory genes in M. truncatula results in plants that are smaller and have fewer root nodules. We hypothesise that plant and microbe are coordinated by plant and microbe circadian rhythms for optimal efficiency of interaction. The Gifford lab has recently isolated new M. truncatula mutants with putative disruption in other key clock genes.

Differences in shoot growth in R108 and lhy-2 mutant M. truncatula