ABOUT

Caetano Albuquerque Postdoctoral Researcher, California State University, Los Angeles cpereir8@csula.edu

I grew up going to my family farm, and that inspired me to pursue my Agronomy degree. As an undergraduate student, I did several internships and research assistantships with different crops until I decided to study viticulture after an internship in a vineyard in the the Apalta Valley, Chile. Then I went to France an as an exchange-student to study Management and Marketing of Wine and Viticulture at the University of Grenoble II - Pierre-Mèndes. After finishing it and then graduating in Agronomy, I started pursuing my PhD in Horticulture and Agronomy at the Viticulture and Enology Department at UC Davis, working with Dr. Andrew McElrone, where I later did a postdoc to follow up with my PhD findings. I am currently a postdoc working with Dr. Christine Scoffoni at the Department of Biological Sciences at Cal State LA, where I am expanding my research to crop grasses.


RESEARCH INTERESTS
My overarching research goal is to understand how plants respond to drought and recover from it. I relate structure and function to understand the mechanisms that impact plant hydraulic transport, thus gas exchange, photosynthesis, and plant performance. I have a special focus on leaves, and I am expanding my research to roots to ultimately integrate the responses of both organs. The goal is to study how they are coordinated to have an integrated understanding of whole-plant responses to drought as well as their recovery from it upon rehydration as they are the inlet and outlet of the plant hydraulic system. I combine leaf and root hydraulics with synchrotron-based microCT and physiological measurements such as gas exchange to relate structural and functional responses to water stress and recovery that ultimately impact plant and crop performance.