Catalina Feuli

The primary research area of Dr. Aakansha Kanojia is plant stress physiology, with a focus on the biological pathways involved in the decline of stress tolerance with age in Arabidopsis thaliana. She has developed extensive expertise in morphological characterization, physiological experiments, gene mapping, plant tissue culture, metabolomics, transcriptomics, and DNA sequencing data analysis.

As part of the CropPrime project, she investigated the effects of seaweed-based biostimulants (Microgrow and Super-Fifty Prime + Microgrow) and candidate extracts derived from Phytophthora in collaboration with BioAtlantis. The study aimed to evaluate the potential of these biostimulants to enhance plant performance under heat stress conditions, contributing to agricultural sustainability. To achieve this, lettuce plants were treated with the biostimulants under controlled conditions and subsequently exposed to heat stress at 40°C after 24 hours. Key parameters, including fresh weight, leaf number, and overall plant growth, were assessed. The preliminary results indicated that Microgrow and the combination of Microgrow + Super-Fifty Prime significantly enhanced lettuce growth under both normal and heat stress conditions, demonstrating their efficacy in mitigating stress and improving crop resilience.