• Plants In Action Edition 1
  • Plants In Action, 2nd Edition PDF files
  • Functional Plant Biology
  • Phytogen
  • Plant Detectives
Contact
facebook
twitter
email
  • About
    • 2021 Executive Committee
    • Discipline Representatives
    • ASPS representation
    • Website & Communications Sub-Committee
    • Past Presidents
    • AGM
    • Constitution
    • ASPS Diversity and Inclusion
  • Members
    • Join
    • Member log in
    • Membership Renewal
    • Member directory
    • Life Members
      • ASPS Life Member Professor Graham Farquhar
      • ASPS Life Member Associate Professor Hendrik (Hank) Greenway
      • ASPS Life Member Dr Marshall (Hal) D Hatch
      • ASPS Life Member Dr Paul E Kriedmann
      • ASPS Life Member Dr Mervyn Ludlow
      • ASPS Life Member Emeritus Professor Rana Munns
      • ASPS Life Member Conjoint Professor Christina E Offler
      • ASPS Life Member Professor (Charles) Barry Osmond
      • ASPS Life Member Emeritus Professor John W Patrick
      • ASPS Life Member Dr Joe Wiskich
    • Corresponding Members
    • Elected Fellows
  • Events
    • National Science Week 2021
    • ASPS 2021
      • ASPS2024 Abstract submission
    • ComBio2022
    • Upcoming Events/Add an Event
  • Awards & Funding
    • Peter Goldacre Award
    • Jan Anderson Award and Lecture
    • JG Wood Lecture
    • RN Robertson Lecture
    • RN Robertson Travelling Fellowship 2025
    • ASPS-FPB Best Paper Award
    • ASPS Education and Outreach Award
    • Student Travel Awards
    • ASPS Student Poster Prizes
  • Employment
    • Job Board
    • Post a Job
  • Publications
    • Phytogen
    • Functional Plant Biology
    • Plants In Action Edition 1
    • Plants In Action, 2nd Edition PDF files
  • Research
    • Ecophysiology
    • Genetics & Molecular Biology
    • Cell Biology
    • Plant-Microbe Interactions
    • Plant Development
    • Whole Plants
  • Teaching
    • ASPS Teaching and Outreach Award Winners
    • Teaching Philosophy
    • Teaching Outreach
    • Resources
  • Menu
    • other stuff

Congratulations to ASPS member Graham Farquhar 2018 senior Australian

01 March 2018

 

Graham Farquhar – Senior Australian 2018

Graham started 2018 with yet another award on Australia Day – Senior Australian for 2018. For those of you unfamiliar with Graham, he has previously won the Prime Minister’s prize for Science in 2015, the Macfarlane Burnett medal from the AAS in 2016 and the Kyoto prize in 2017, to name the most recent. These awards are in recognition of his work that has led to wheat varieties with improved water use efficiency and improved representation of climate change trends associated with evaporation. Plants and water feature in both.

Australia has a significant grain growing industry reliant on rainfall rather than irrigation. Annual rainfall is low and variable between years and plays a major role in setting the potential yield that farmers can achieve. Together with colleagues, Graham developed two theoretical frameworks: firstly, a mathematical model describing photosynthesis based around the biochemical properties of the enzyme Rubisco (Farquhar, von Caemmerer & Berry, 1980) and secondly, equations describing what determines the stable isotopic composition of plants (Farquhar, O’Leary & Berry, 1982). There are two stable isotopic forms for carbon, 12C and 13C, with about 1% of the CO2 in the atmosphere containing 13C. Graham realised that carbon isotope discrimination could provide a way of capturing information about how much water a plant chose to spend in order to gain carbon. It turns out that the 13C/12C ratio in plant material is linearly related to the ratio of carbon gained in photosynthesis to water lost during transpiration. The measurement of the 13C/12C ratio of plant material allowed the identification of contrasting wheat lines and a trait that could be selected. Collaboration with the CSIRO plant breeder Richard Richards led to the release of commercial cultivars with greater yield under water limiting conditions for which they shared the Rank Prize in 2014. The carbon isotope theory has proved useful in a number of ways, in agriculture, ecophysiology and global flux models.

With regard to climate change, Graham’s interest in crop water use extended to larger environmental scales and he realised that some model predictions arising from climate change were misleading. Rather than atmospheric warming leading to an increase in potential evaporation, observations from instruments used by the Bureau of Meteorology and by farmers to schedule irrigation suggested the opposite trend (Roderick and Farquhar 2002).

Graham conducts his research at the Australian National University. He has been a strong supporter of Functional Plant Biology, publishing much of his stable isotope work there and encouraging others to do so.

 

Farquhar GD, von Caemmerer S, Berry JA. 1980. A biochemical model of photosynthetic CO2 assimilation in leaves of C3 species. Planta 149: 78-90.

Farquhar GD, O’Leary MH, Berry JA. 1982. On the relationship between carbon isotope discrimination and the intercellular carbon dioxide concentration in leaves. Australian Journal of Plant Physiology 9: 121-137.

Roderick ML, Farquhar GD. 2002. The cause of decreased pan evaporation over the past 50 years. Science 298: 1410-1411.

Archive of Phytogen PDFs

All Phytogen issues published as PDF newsletters can also be downloaded by clicking here.

Tags

ASPS 60 Awards Global Plant Council Phytogen Plant Nutrition Trust Travel Scholarship RN Robertson Travelling Fellowship Science Meets Parliament Women in science

Archives

  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
Copyright 2017 Australian Society of Plant Scientists Disclaimer & Privacy
Website by Michael Major Media