Graduated in Environmental Sciences. Last year PhD student. My PhD is focused in the study of climate change effects (elevated air CO2 concentration, elevated air temperature and drought) on the physiological, biochemical, molecular and agronomic processes response along the full life span of a malting barley cultivar. More specifically, I am studying the following processes:

• Plant water relations, analyzing both the physiological processes and aquaporin expression.
• Carbon metabolism, focusing on the physiological and biochemical photosynthetic processes.
• Nitrogen metabolism, from N uptake until it assimilation.
• Plant growth and development.
• Grain yield and quality.
• Plant memory. Once plants have suffered a vegetative drought, on one hand how plants face the recovery period, and on the other hand how response to a subsequent drought at anthesis. Adaptive and maladaptive mechanisms.
• Leaf and grain metabolomics. An approach to the better understand of plants physiological and metabolomic responses to climate change and its influence in final grain quality.

My future research idea is to continue studying the effects of climate change on crops water relations and photosynthetic metabolism, either at the theoretical and more applicable point of view. Concretely, I would like to focus on:

• The study of plant hydraulic conductance and stomata regulation through physiological, morphological/anatomical and molecular approaches. The analysis of aquaporin and stomata development related genes expression are stablished as target traits.
• Analyse the mechanisms behind plant memory response, both under a recovery and under a subsequent stress situation.
• The applicability of the studied processes and mechanisms in crop breeding plans.
• The development of adaptation strategies to deal with climate change threatening in food security, especially in the most disadvantaged countries where the importance of crops in diet is greater.