Master thesis on mechnistic understanding of plant water use efficiency at the Chair of Root-Soil Interaction

04.02.2026, Student assistants, internships, student research projects

We invite motivated students to undertake their Master’s thesis as part of an ongoing research project aimed at elucidating the mechanisms underlying plant water use efficiency.

Research Focus:
Precision stomatal regulation for Water-Use-Efficient crops

Background:
Fresh water is becoming the most limiting resource for global food production. Huge success has been achieved in this domain, but the translation of the current knowledge into practice is still slow. One bottle-neck has been: generating high WUE crops always come up with trade-offs in growth. Our laboratory deciphers genetic and molecular mechanisms that allow plants to maximize WUE without sacrificing bi-omass or yield. We are now recruiting a highly motivated Master students who are passionate about plant stress biology, molecular cloning or physiological phenotyping to push the following lines forward:

Research Directions
• Tissue-specific abscisic acid (ABA) signaling and their contribution to WUE
Approaches: molecular cloning, confocal microscopy, thermal imaging, and gas exchange analysis will be employed to conduct this direction.
• Thermal imaging-driven mutants and genes identification
Approaches: thermal imaging and molecular cloning.

Who we are looking for:
• Enthusiasm for either molecular bench-work and/or plant phenotyping platforms.
• Background in life sciences, plant biology, biotechnology, related fields.
• Responsible mindset and team spirit.

Application procedure:
• Applications should contact binman.liu@tum.de directly by 31.07.2026.


For more detailed information on the project, please visit https://www.mls.ls.tum.de/rsi/research/working-group-dr-yang/

Kontakt: binman.liu@tum.de

More Information

https://www.mls.ls.tum.de/fileadmin/w00bwv/rsi/_my_direct_uploads/Master_thesis_Arabidopsis_WUE.pdf