Jagdeep

Jagdeep Sidhu

Hi there, Jagdeep here. Thanks for stopping by! I am a Postdoctoral Scholar at Penn State, University Park, USA. I am studying the importance of root anatomical and subcellular phenotypes under abiotic stress including suboptimal water and nutrient availability. I grew up on a small farm in Punjab, India. Our family farm is where I developed a fascination with the natural world, specifically plants.

I have always wondered about the "hows" and "whys" of the basic functioning of plants. My Dad - my hero, played a significant role in nourishing my desire to learn. He motivated me on every step and guided me to join the B.Sc. Agriculture at Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab, India.

Once at PAU, there was no looking back; thanks to the great group of friends and mentors, I knew I wanted to study plant breeding and evolution. Following that interest, I did my master's from South Dakota State University. I immensely enjoyed working in Dr. Sunish Sehgal's winter breeding program. While studying nitrogen fixation in wheat, I got interested in plant roots. During my PhD at Penn State (with Dr. Jonathan Lynch) I studied the utility of root anatomical and subcellular phenotypes under abiotic stress including suboptimal water and nutrient availability. Currently I am a Postdoctral Scholar with Dr. Ruairidh Sawers at Penn State. Along with anatomical and subcellular root phenotypes, I now study host genetics in response to Arbuscular Mycorrhiza Fungi (AMF).

Moving forward, I want to work towards developing climate change resilient/abiotic stress resistance crop varieties. Working on climate resilient traits is very personal to me as I have witnessed how terminal drought and heat stress have adversely affected the wheat yields on our family farm and in the overall Punjab region over the years. Using my current knowledge of genetics, plant physiology, and crop modeling; and levering novel computer vision techniques for phenotyping, I want to discover crop traits, genes, and cellular mechanisms that will eventually help us develop climate-resilient crop varieties.

Research

My overall research interest revolves around discovering and deploying traits, genes, and mechanisms related to abiotic stress resistance.
Google scholar link

Ph.D. Projects

I investigated novel root anatomical and subcellular root phenotypes regulating root metabolic cost. Root metabolic cost is an important aspect of efficient soil exploration since plants spend one-third of their daily photosynthate reserves on maintaining living tissue. Root anatomical and subcellular phenes are an important determinant of root metabolic costs, soil exploration, and soil resource acquisition. Therefore, I investigated traits that reduce the root metabolic cost of the root system. My dissertation includes:

1. RootSlice – a novel functional-structural model for root anatomical phenotypes.
   Key publications: Sidhu et al., 2023
   RootSlice reconstructing maize roots using LAT images
   
   
   
   
   
2. Root cortical cell wall thickness - novel drought adaptative trait.
   Key publications: Sidhu et al., 2023
   Reviewed in Lynch et al., 2021
   Presented at the ASA, CSSA, and SSSA International Annual Meeting (2022), Baltimore, MD, USA.
   
   
   
   
   
3. Cortical cell size regulates root metabolic cost
   Key publications: Sidhu et al., 2023
   Quick overview of the concept - no voiceover, testing the independence of my slides :)
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Ploidy induced below ground syndrome shapes evolution of wheat
   Presented at the ASA, CSSA, and SSSA International Annual Meeting (2022), Baltimore, MD, USA.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Pleiotropy between leaf and root anatomy
   Would not it be easy to estimate root phenes using leaf traits? Well, stay tuned for upcoming results
   Meanwhile take a look at a cool article by Strock et al., 2022

MS Projects

My MS research was on assessing and exploiting primary and secondary germplasm pools of bread wheat.

Projects

1. Assessing the genetic diversity and characterizing genomic regions conferring Tan Spot resistance in cultivated rye.
   Publication link


2. Characterizing wild and domesticated tetraploid wheat species (Triticum turgidum subsp.) for resistance to Fusarium head blight, leaf rust, and tan spot.
   Chapter link


3. Evaluation and identification of ancestors and wild relatives of wheat for their interaction with diazotrophs.
   Chapter link

Teaching

My job as a teacher is to inspire students to learn, their motivation and desire help me find the best way to teach. Some of the topics that I love to discuss are plant physiology, evolution, genetics, statistics, and human psychology.

Courses

1. HORT 402: Plant nutrition
   Recordings of the lectures are available upon request.
   
   Activity example: explaning the role of electrochemical gradient in ion uptake becomes really easy if students choose to be K⁺ and H⁺ ions
   
   
   
   
   
2. AGRO 28: Principles of crop production
3. PS 223: Principles of plant pathology

Mentoring

Visting scholars

1. Elena Giuliano, 2021, Sustainable Agroecosystems, ETH Zurich
   Project: Root-associated microbiome and synergism with root phenotypes in maize under nitrogen deficiency and drought.
   

Undergraduates

1. Samuel Walker, 2021-2022, Department of Plant Science, PSU
   Project: Effects of polyploidy on plant performance.
   Currently- Sophomore
   
2. Zhuoyan Si, 2021, Department of Plant Science, PSU
   Project: Evolution of root metabolic cost and anatomical phenes in maize
   Currently- MS student at BU
3. Spencer Riccio, 2021-2022, Department of Plant Science, PSU
   Project: Screening of maize inbreds for performance under drought stress
   Currently- Hygeine Specialist at AdvanSix
   
4. English Dawson, 2020, Department of Plant Science, PSU
   Project: Changes in anatomy along the longitudinal axis of maize roots
   Currently- PA at Penn State AEC
   
5. Douglas Watford, 2019-2021, Department of Plant Science, PSU
   Project: Evolution of root metabolic cost and anatomical phenes in wheat
   Currently- RA at Moderna
   

Fun

more to come.

Media

Research covered in news

• "Jagdeep Sidhu receives the 2021 Paul Hands Award” covered by Roots lab, Penn State
• "Jagdeep Sidhu receives college research funding” covered by Roots lab, Penn State
• "Jagdeep Sidhu awarded the 2019 outstanding Agricultural Graduate Student Award from AASIO” covered by Roots lab, Penn State
• "PSU news - Newly discovered trait helps plants grow deeper roots in dry, compacted soils” covered by PSU news
• "Newly discovered trait helps plants grow deeper roots in dry, compacted soils” covered by Science Daily
• "Strong plant roots can penetrate compact soil” covered by Producer.com
• "A newly-discovered plant trait instils roots with a super strength” covered by anthropocenemagazine.org
• "Silencing the alarm (stomata)” covered by plantstomata.wordpress.com

Contact

• Twitter
• GitHub

CV

Elements

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