Plants for the Future event draws enthusiastic crop of budding botanists

Belfield was a hive of activity last Saturday 7 June for the annual UCD Festival, a showcase of the campus’s education, innovation, creativity and research.

Among the events at last Saturday's festival was the excellent Plants for the Future exhibit, which was sponsored by the Earth Institute and which attracted a large crop of budding botanists.

Visitors were taken on a journey through the Evolution of Plants Garden, tracing 500 million years of plant history, and got hands-on with ancient biotechnology by processing cereal grains using Bronze Age tools. 

They also explored modern smart farming with an interactive drone display and discovered how mycorrhizae and biostimulants are helping to support more sustainable agriculture in Ireland.

Aspiring astrobiologists were also offered a glimpse into the future through the ESA MARSCROP project, which explores how plants from extreme environments on Earth might help us meet the challenges on the Moon and Mars. 

In addition, visitors were invited to reflect on their personal connections to the plant world through the living To Plants, With Love installation. 

Organised and led by Dr Nicholas Brereton with the support of Dr Olga Lastovetsky; Associate Professor Carl Ng; Dr Joanna Kacprzyk; Professor Paul McCabe; Associate  Professor Sónia Negrão; Dr Mortaza Khodaeiaminjan, and Professor Fiona Doohan (all from the School of Biology and Environmental Science), and Dr Meriel McClatchie (School of Archaeology), the event successfully connected ancient practices, current innovations, and future possibilities of Irish plant science - showing how plants have consistently played an essential role in life on Earth and beyond.

The event was supported by students and postdocs from the School of Biology and Environmental Science: they included Stefania Maria Sabau, Vashika Narasimhan, Connor Conway, Cas Cornet, Alice Simões Neves, Zeyu Niu, Avraam Koskosidis, Natarajan Subramani, Sai Sushma Boggarapu and Kani Ravichandran. Keelin Murphy and Maria Valero from the School of Archaeology supported the event alongside Dr McClatchie.

Researchers in UCD are tackling global, national and local challenges when it comes to the impacts of a changing climate and extreme weather events. Their work looks at these impacts on crop production and what can be learned from the past; how disease resistance can be improved to safeguard food production, and how plants respond to a host of environmental stresses. 

To discover more about this work, please follow this link.