Periodic Reporting for period 3 - HYDROCARB (Hydrogen isotopes in plant-derived organic compounds as new tool to identify changes in the carbon metabolism of plants and ecosystems during the anthropocene)
Reporting period: 2020-11-01 to 2022-04-30
Understanding how plants and ecosystems respond to global environmental changes is a key challenge in the biological sciences. Biological archives, such as tree rings or herbarium specimens in historical botanical collections are critical tools to address this challenge. This is, because the analysis of the stable isotopes in archived plant material allows researchers to identify how plant physiological processes have responded to environmental changes over the past decades. Until now, these analyses have mainly employed the stable isotopes ratios of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. In his new project HYDROCARB, will establish the analysis of hydrogen isotopes in botanical archives to obtain new information on environmentally induced changes in plants’ carbon metabolism.
The carbon metabolism of a plant has a fundamental influence on plant growth. It has therefore a key influence on yields in the agriculture and forestry but also on the global carbon cycle and the global climate. Kahmen and his team seek to use the novel hydrogen isotope analysis of archived plant materials to better understand how the carbon metabolism in plants and thus plant growth and the global carbon cycle have responded to changes in the global environment over the past 150 years.
The carbon metabolism of a plant has a fundamental influence on plant growth. It has therefore a key influence on yields in the agriculture and forestry but also on the global carbon cycle and the global climate. Kahmen and his team seek to use the novel hydrogen isotope analysis of archived plant materials to better understand how the carbon metabolism in plants and thus plant growth and the global carbon cycle have responded to changes in the global environment over the past 150 years.
Sofar the team in HYDROCARB was able to start all work packages successfully. Most of the experiments are underway and have achieved early and promising results. These results are currently under evaluation and partly already prepared for publication. At this point, it is, however, too early to communicate specific outcomes of the project to the public.
HYDROCARB is on full track. As the goals of HYDROCARB were already ambitious, we cannot at this point report unexpected results.