Abstract Booklet 2019 Session 1: Students Speaker 1: James Fazzino Perspectives from a Career in Agriculture Fazzino, J.1 1La Trobe University James is Chair of Osteon Medical, a leading digital health business. James is also Chair of Manufacturing Australia, a CEO-led coalition of Australia's largest manufacturers who work with all sides of government, business and community to help the sector realise its full potential. James was also appointed as a Non-Executive Director of Australia Pipeline Limited (the APA Group). APA is an ASX 50 company that owns and operates circa $20bn of energy assets in Australia. James is Vice-Chancellors Fellow at La Trobe University and in this capacity provides advice to the Vice-Chancellor and Senior Management on strategy, culture and operational excellence. James is also an Adjunct Professor at La Trobe Business School specialising in management, international business and digital. James passionately believes in diversity and is a member of the Melbourne Male Champions of Change group. James was formerly the Managing Director & CEO of Incitec Pivot. During his 14 year tenure at Incitec, first as CFO and then as CEO, the company increased in size 6-fold to an enterprise value of $8bn. Highlights during his time at IPL included overseeing construction of two new $1bn world scale manufacturing plants (one at Moranbah, Australia and the other at Louisianna, USA), successfully integrating the $3.6bn Dyno-Nobel acquisition (which took IPL global) and restructuring the group to become a global industrial chemical company with operations in 13 countries around the world. 2 Session 1: Students Speaker 2: Caitlyn Burt Plant cell dialysis using vesicles and aquaporins Byrt, C.1,2,3, McGaughey, S.1, Qiu, J.1, Groszmann, M.2 and Tyerman, S.1 1ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, the University of Adelaide, South Australia, 5005. 2ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis, Division of Plant Sciences, Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Acton, Australian Capital Territory, 0200. 3ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, Division of Plant Sciences, Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Acton, Australian Capital Territory, 0200. Regulation of water and solute transport in plants is indissoluble from survival and productivity. One of the mechanisms plants use to control water and solute transport involves regulating the function of channels called plasma membrane intrinsic proteins (PIPs). In addition to being localised in the plasma membrane and transporting water, some PIPs can also be found in small vesicle, pre-vacuolar, autophagosome and extracellular vesicle membranes and a subset of PIPs can transport monovalent cations. PIP localisation has been observed to change in response to salt and osmotic stress treatments and this is associated with changes in PIP phosphorylation. We observed that the phosphorylation state of water and ion channel PIPs can change the relative permeability of these channels to water, sodium and potassium. This means that plants could use PIP phosphorylation to control both when and where water and monovalent cations are being transported within compartments inside cells and between cells. As root cells take up soil solution the water, nutrient and salt ions within the soil solution can be partitioned into different sub-cellular compartments, such as vesicles, vacuole compartments and autophagosomes. We are exploring whether changes in PIP phosphorylation may be part of the process to control the relative distribution of water, sodium and potassium within different membrane bound compartments inside cells, in a system analogous to dialysis. Sub-cellular control of the transport and compartmentation of water, salt and nutrient ions via aquaporin containing membranous compartments is likely to be an important contributor to the whole plant regulation of hydraulic conductance, nutrient and salt transport. 3 Session 1: Students Speaker 3: Maketalena Aleamotu‘a PHI thickenings in Brassica roots – an adaptation to water stress? Aleamotu‘a, M.1, Baker, J.1, McCurdy, D.W.1 and Collings, D.A.1 1University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia Phi thickenings (PTs) are secondary cell wall bands found in the radial walls of root cortical cells. These bands occur in diverse angiosperms and gymnosperms, and although first described in the 19th century, little is known about their induction and functions. We investigated PTs in young, primary roots of Brassica oleracea and B. napus. PTs are rapidly induced in 4 day-old seedlings transferred from control plates to plates containing salt. Confocal microscopy demonstrated that PTs form a continuous, lignified ring around the inner cortex, immediately outside the endodermis, and that a delicate, reticulate network of lignified secondary walls developed along the inner face of these cells adjacent to the endodermis after thickening formation. Thickening induction is not specific to salt, with levels of induction generated by salt, mannitol and sucrose equally dependent on the osmotic strength of the media. Glycinebetaine (GB) did not, however, induce thickenings in an osmolarity-dependent fashion. When tested in combination with other osmotica that induce thickenings, GB inhibited induction, suggesting that it acts as an osmoprotectant. Gibberellin was identified as a key hormone regulating PT formation. Time course experiments demonstrated that salt-induced induction occurred in a narrow region within the differentiation zone of the root within 12-24 h after transfer from control to salt plates, with cellulose deposition starting after 12 h followed by lignification from 15 h. As thickening induction in primary roots of Brassica is cultivar-dependent, we are now testing a diversity set of ~450 B. napus cultivars. We anticipate that quantification of PT induction across this collection may allow discovery of genetic loci linked to water stress-induced PT development in the Brassicaceae. 4 Session 1: Students Speaker 4: Deepak Baranwal Genome-wide association analysis of stripe rust resistance among a wheat diversity panel Baranwal, D.1, Bansal, U.1, Cu, S.2, Stangoiulis, J.2, Threthowan, R.1 and Bariana, H.1 1The University of Sydney Plant Breeding Institute, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, 107 Cobbitty Road, Cobbitty, NSW 2570, Australia 2College of Science & Engineering, Flinders University, Sturt Road, Bedford Park, South Australia Wheat stripe rust, caused by Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici (Pst), was estimated to cause A$127 worth of losses in Australia. Virulence for stripe rust resistance genes deployed in current wheat cultivars is carried by derivatives of Pst pathotype 134 E16A+ and another pathotype, 239 E237A-Yr17+Yr33+, detected in 2017. The new pathotype 239 E237A- Yr17+Yr33+ carries virulence for Yr1, Yr33, Yr57, Yr58, Yr72 and Yr75 that were effective against derivatives of pathotype 134 E16A+. These examples of pathotypic introduction and evolution stressed the need to identify diverse sources of resistance. A wheat diversity panel of 293 wheat accessions including synthetic hexaploid wheat genotypes and progenies derived from landraces selected by scientists of International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, Mexico was tested with pre-2002 and post-2002 Pst pathotypes in the greenhouse and field. This panel was genotyped using the Illumina iSelect 90K Infinium wheat SNP array and markers linked with Yr15, Yr18, Yr29, Yr34 and Yr46. Stripe rust response and genotypic data were used for genome-wide association study (GWAS) to detect genomic regions controlling resistance to stripe rust. The GWAS analysis identified 20 new marker-trait associations on chromosomes 1A, 1B, 1D, 2A, 2B, 3D, 6A, 7A and 7D in addition to the previously reported QTL on chromosomes 1A, 1B, 2B, 3B, 3D, 4A, 5A and 7B. The newly identified associations will be validated. ________________________________________________________ 5 Session 1: Students Speaker 5: Maja Arsic Bio-imaging reveals foliar phosphate photosynthetic restoration and entry pathways in P-deficient barley Arsic, M.1,2, Le Tougaard, S.1, Lombi, E.2, Persson, D.O.1, Schjoerring, J.K.1, Husted, S.1 1Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark 2Future Industries Institute, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, Australia Improving phosphorus (P) fertilizer efficiency is a critical challenge due to declining global mineral P supplies, a growing global population and environmental degradation associated with excess soil nutrients. Foliar sprays are a potential alternative to soil-based fertilizers, as they could supplement targeted fertilizer delivery to crops when needed. Foliar P sprays have been investigated in terms of boosting plant biomass or grain yield. However, a quick and reliable assay for screening the effect of liquid P fertilizer solutions on plant physiological parameters determining yield responses is currently lacking. Furthermore, the foliar pathways across the leaf surface are unclear, yet they are important to understand in order to optimize liquid fertilizer solutions. Here we describe the development and application of chlorophyll-a fluorescence and mass spectrometry bio-imaging techniques to investigate restoration of P-limited photosynthetic machinery by foliar P, and the pathways by which the phosphate ions enter across the leaf surface. The development