The Murphy Lab is all about corn 🌽 (maize) – how do we grow corn in a way that is more sustainable for our planet? To answer this question, we are working to understand how corn grows in harsh environments. If we can understand what types of corn grow best under hotter, drier conditions – and importantly WHY they grow better – we can begin to breed and engineer better corn.
Techniques we use include high-throughput phenotyping, where analyze plant images to understand how plants grow and deal with stress. Then we use genomics and metabolomics to figure out why some maize varieties respond in different ways.
Check out recent Murphy Lab publications on Katie’s Google Scholar page.
Learn more about PlantCV, our favorite (and free) image analysis software here.
Check out the Danforth Center Careers page for job openings.