Plant metabolic changes under changing climate
Dinesh Thakur, Nikita Rathore, Sayantika Banerjee, Murugash Manavalan, Zuzana Münzbergová
This project investigates how changing temperature, water availability, and other climatic drivers reshape plant metabolism across natural climatic gradients, long-term field manipulation experiments, and controlled growth-chamber studies. We examine multiple plant compartments (including leaves, roots, floral volatiles, and root exudates) to capture how climate signals are integrated above- and below-ground. Rather than focusing on metabolomes in isolation, we explicitly combine biochemical profiling with morpho-physiological traits to develop a holistic understanding of plant strategies under climate stress. By working across biological scales, from population-level variation within species to interspecific and evolutionary comparisons, our goal is to reveal how metabolic flexibility, functional traits, and evolutionary history jointly determine plant resilience in a rapidly changing climate.
Publications:
Banerjee S., Rathore N., Semerád J., Cajthaml T., Münzbergová Z. & Thakur D. 2025: Soil Moisture and Its Interaction With Temperature Determine Root Metabolomes of a Himalayan Alpine Shrub. Physiologia Plantarum 177, 1 – 21. https://doi.org/10.1111/ppl.70444
Bhatt T., Rathore N., Semerád J., Cajthaml T., Thakur D. & Münzbergová Z. 2026: Transgenerational Drought and Methyl Jasmonate Memory Interactively Shape Metabolome and Physiology in Clonal Grass. Physiologia Plantarum 178, e70720. https://doi.org/10.1111/ppl.70720.