Cody Hajnal
Cody completed his Bachelor of Science (majoring in Plant Science) at the University of Melbourne in December of 2020. Currently, Cody is a Masters student supervised by Prof Michelle Watt, Dr Joanne Birch and Dr Daniel Murphy. In his spare time Cody enjoys spending his time in the kitchen cooking and baking, with his favourite thing to make being a lemon tart. His interest in food also means that he loves to explore the vast number of amazing cafes and restaurants around Melbourne. He also enjoys time outdoors by going walking, hiking, and fishing around Victoria.
Water Availability
Cody’s research project is titled “Discovering responses to water availability in the roots of Australian native plants (Poaceae & Fabaceae)”. It is centred on phenotyping the roots of two of the most important taxonomic groups of Australia’s native plant biodiversity.
Cody aims to discover and understand how the roots of these native plants are impacted by intermittent drought events and ultimately how they function. He will study two scales of root architecture as part of his project, root system architecture on the larger scale and root cellular architecture at the finer scale. This will be conducted through pot trials in controlled glasshouse environments and then analysed using image analysis software and microscopy.
Given that water is such a fundamental component of plant growth there seems to be a lack of research that details how plant roots cope with drought. This research will help to broaden the field of root research and contribute to closing the current knowledge gap that exists for root system responses to intermittent drought, in largely understudied, native Australian species. From this research, any candidate traits that Cody identifies could then be proposed for breeding crop plants to increase crop resilience and production in future climates.
You can find more about his project here.