MIE celebrates Plant Health, featuring visiting scholar Dr Qianhan Shang
Picture: © S. Bernhardt (iDiv)
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The year 2020 is the United Nations' International Year of Plant Health (IYPH). Every month, one of our team members introduces his or her interest in plant health. May 2020 is the month of Qianhan Shang, visiting scholar from China.
“My name is Qianhan Shang and I came from China as a visiting scholar supported by China Scholarship Council for a one year’s research visit (06.2019-06.2020) in the research group Molecular Interaction Ecology at the German Centre of integrative Biodiversity (iDiv) in Leipzig. I am interested in the interactions between plants, microorganisms and herbivores. Now in Nicole van Dam’s MIE group, I joined in a project to study the multilateral interactions among legumes, Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF)and nematodes. In particular, I study the effects of Rhizophagus irregularis and Meloidogyne incognita on Medicago truncatula. I apply molecular and chemical approaches to study defense-related genes and photohormones. This helps me to understand how the responses of M. truncatula to nematodes change when the plant is colonized by mycorrhiza.
My research helps to understand the underlying mechanisms of how plants interact with beneficial fungi, and how this may help to combat detrimental nematodes. I hope that this improves our current strategies to keep plants healthy in agricultural production systems”.
