2023-05-17 by Bakul Piplani
IndiaAsksWhy Meets Gitanjali Yadav
So many colours in the world and yet plants are green, not blue, orange, red or violet! If you have ever wondered why most plants are green, you’re at the right place! In this episode of India Asks Why, let us take you into the world of green plants! Green plants are autotrophs, that is, they make their own food from carbon dioxide, sunlight and water through a process called photosynthesis. To absorb sunlight, they make use of chlorophyll, a pigment that absorbs blue and red parts of the visible light spectrum but reflects green light. So, most plants appear green because chlorophyll absorbs all but green light. Intriguing, isn’t it? Utsuka and Jigyasa talk more about the greenness of plants in the first segment of the podcast.
Captivated by the fascinating world of green plants, Utsuka and Jigyasa talk with Dr. Gitanjali Yadav, a plant scientist and computational biologist at the National Institute of Plant Genome Research (India) and the University of Cambridge (UK). Dr. Yadav’s lab studies photosynthesis in algae, tiny aquatic plants that make their food much more efficiently than most land plants. They are curious about how these algae know when to switch ON photosynthesis and when to switch it OFF. Dr. Yadav explains that just like humans, plants have an internal clock which tells them when it is day and night. Her lab studies the genes that control this clock and synchronise the photosynthesis machinery with the time of the day. In the long run, Dr. Yadav aspires to use the knowledge from her research to improve the efficiency of photosynthesis in crop plants to help reduce starvation and improve global food security, especially important in the wake of climate change. How wonderful would the world be without food scarcity, starvation and malnutrition!
We’re sure you must be eager to know what inspired Dr. Yadav to be a plant scientist! In the podcast, Dr. Yadav revisits her childhood when she spent a lot of time in sacred forests and was fascinated by the different shapes of leaves and the different kinds of canopies that trees in the forests have! Doesn’t her story inspire you to be a scientist? For budding scientists, Dr. Yadav has a special message. She says “Just look outside, anywhere around you and search for questions that science has not yet been able to answer. Ask such questions. Maybe someday you will be the one finding the answers to those questions!”
While her primary job is searching for answers to her favourite questions about plants, Dr. Yadav says that as a scientist she has a lot more to do in order to run and manage the lab. On a typical day, she juggles between multiple tasks just like the CEO of a small company! She attends meetings, looks for funds to run the lab, writes about her research, and teaches budding scientists like yourself. Sounds complicated, right? But all this effort helps scientists like her solve complex problems and make the world a better place!
Listen to the podcast to join Utsuka and Jigyasa as they talk to Dr. Yadav about her exciting work, her typical day in the lab and how being a scientist is not just about running experiments! You can also hear her talk about the origin and evolution of photosynthesis, chlorophyll and green plants as we know them today. Woah, that is a lot to learn in a day and we are sure that you have many more questions to ask. You can leave your questions on our website, and we’ll take them up! :)
Reference
- Why are plants green? John Innes Centre (28 August 2019). [https://www.jic.ac.uk/blog/why-are-plants-green/]
- Why are plants green? to reduce the noise in photosynthesis. Quanta Magazine (30 July 2020). [https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-are-plants-green-to-reduce-the-noise-in-photosynthesis-20200730/]
- Why are Plants Grreen? IndiaAsksWhy. https://www.indiaaskswhy.org/blog/2023-05-16-why-are-plants-green/
- Cambridge Global Food Security Researcher: Gitanjali Yadav. Cambridge Global Food Security: An Interdisciplinary Research Centre at the University of Cambridge (4 March 2020) [https://www.globalfood.cam.ac.uk/news/gitayadav] National Institute of Plant Genome Research: Gitanjali Yadav. [https://nipgr.ac.in/research/dr_gyadav.php]
