I am a Plant biologist from Egypt. My main research interest is microbial plant priming which is an eco-friendly approach used to improve plant tolerance against many abiotic and biotic stresses. During my master studies at Tanta University, I used bacterial inoculation to prime salt stress tolerance of barley which proved to be very efficient and promising strategy. Later I joined SLU as a guest student doing more research concerning bacterial priming for several abiotic stress factors including heat, cold and drought.

CV

Primed plants (Right) Vs. Un-primed plants (left); Wheat plants primed with bacteria can survive without water for 10 days.

PhD project:

Right now I'm a PhD student working with Dr. Salme Timmusk. My project is aiming to isolate and develop microbial species for application in agricultural system and improving plant stress tolerance. Several bacterial strains are able to colonize the plants roots and inducing stress tolerance through several mechanisms such as ACC deaminase activity, producing plant growth hormones and enhancing soil fertility. By using priming we were able to grow Wheat and Arabidopsis without water for 10 days. We are also employing several approaches to quantify stress responses in the primed plants including phenotypes, growth parameters, photosynthesis and the volatiles emission.