Aude Coupel-Ledru

The loss of water vapour from aerial tissues of terrestrial plants as they assimilate CO2 from the atmosphere for photosynthesis is biophysically unavoidable. Yet, plants have evolved a diversity of strategies that modulate these trade-offs between water loss and carbon gain, which I find truly fascinating.

My work aims at understanding how these trade-offs are determined by the genetics and the environment. This represents both fundamental and applied challenges for plant science, ecology and agriculture, as saving water while maintaining growth is crucial for plants survival and crop production in the chanllenging environmental conditions brought about by climate change. 

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My approach is resolutely experimental and interdisciplinary, drawing on concepts and tools from ecophysiology, quantitative genetics, genomics and modelling.

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The three pillars central to my research are:

- the development and deployment of original high-throughput phenotyping tools, to characterize thousands of plants in controlled conditions and in the field

- an integrative approach accross scales: gene-plant-canopy. I do so by combining "upstream" research on mechanisms with genetic and modelling approaches

- accounting for complex environmental scenarios, including combinations of stresses (e.g. drought, temperature, CO2 elevation), their integration over time (e.g. over the growth cycle), and GxE interactions

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