Harel Bacher: Plant Physiology First Author

Harel Bacher, first author of “Wild emmer introgression alters root-to-shoot growth dynamics in durum wheat in response to water stress”

Current Position:

Ph.D. candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Education:

B.Sc., M.Sc. and currently a Ph.D. at the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Non-scientific Interests:

Running, biking and hiking with my family and friends

Brief bio:

I grow up in a farming community and spent my childhood working in the fields and learning from the farmers. When I grew up, I decided to learn more about agriculture and plant science. I started my bachelor degree in the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and continue to M.Sc. in the Department of Field Crops and Vegetables, studying the effects of heat stress on cotton yield.

Today I am about to finish my Ph.D. under the supervision of professors Zvi Peleg and Harkamal Walia in a collaboration program between the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. My Ph.D. goal was to find new drought-adaptive mechanisms derived from wild emmer wheat and characterized their physiological and genetic basis. My field of interests are wild relatives physiology, functional and quantitative genetics, and trying to simplify plant and environmental interactions with models. My connection to agriculture drives me to study new functional drought adaptation mechanisms that could be meaningful to farmers in this changing environment.