Profile

• Time Zone

  Pacific

  
  
• Organization

  The University of British Columbia

  
  
• Role

  Scientist Mentor: I will mentor teams of students online

  
  
• Research Interests (300 words)

  Amaranth (Amaranthus hypochondriacus L. and Amaranthus tricolor L.) is an ancient crop in which scientific and commercial interest has recently been renewed. Amaranth has advantages of being a protein rich C4 pseudo-cereal that can be adapted to cultivation in a wide range of environments, with good tolerance of drought and salinity. It also has superior water use efficiency compared to many other C3 and C4 crops. It naturally produces betalains, which may contribute to their agronomic and nutritional advantages. I am using existing genetic and genomic resources to build new resources, and to contribute to our understanding of the biology and to improve production of this economically important crop.

  
  
• Which of the following best describes your career stage?

  Graduate Student

  
  
• Profile Question 1

  What is best about being a scientist?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 1 here (300 words):

  Researching and collecting facts and sharing with the public.

  
  
• Profile Question 2

  What is your favorite plant? Why?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 2 here (300 words):

  Amaranth. It has an exceptional nutritional facts and agronomic properties. One of the most important crops for the next generation.

  
  
• Profile Question 3

  (not set)

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 3 here (300 words):

  (not set)

  
  
• Availability

  I am NOT available, please temporarily remove me from the available mentor list

  
  
• Capacity: How many teams at a time are you comfortable working with?

  2

  
  

Recent Posts

Kale-ifornia Dinesh Adhikary Dec 20, 2017

Hello Alanna, Anna, Shirley, and Siya:

Thank you so much for the response. Sorry, it took me little longer to respond you all back.

I would like to thank you all for the wonderful teaching and learning opportunity for me! I found this semester…

more

Hello Alanna, Anna, Shirley, and Siya:

Thank you so much for the response. Sorry, it took me little longer to respond you all back.

I would like to thank you all for the wonderful teaching and learning opportunity for me! I found this semester very interactive; and I found myself always eager to hear from you all. I really enjoyed!

Please feel free to email me if you have any questions

Wish you all the best! 

Dinesh

Kale-ifornia Dinesh Adhikary Nov 21, 2017

Your data looks great! 

Kale-ifornia Dinesh Adhikary Nov 21, 2017

Alanna, Shirley, Siya:
I hope you guys are doing great! 

Siya & Alanna - your responses are wonderful! 

As you have raised some interesting points regarding non-green plants and their photosynthetic behaviour, I would like to…

more

Alanna, Shirley, Siya:
I hope you guys are doing great! 

Siya & Alanna - your responses are wonderful! 

As you have raised some interesting points regarding non-green plants and their photosynthetic behaviour, I would like to share some of my results that we recently produced. I am also very curios like you guys. One of my students in my lab and I were wondering how does a red pigmented plant behave interms of light absorbing and transmitting…
 

We obtained leaf extracts from a red leaf plant (image attached) using DMSO and regular deionised water. The red pigment is water soluble and chlorophyll is soluble in DMSO. Basically, we extracted all pigments from a red leaf plant. Using a spectrophotometer, we measured light absorbance and transmittance from 300 nm – 700 nm (graph attached).
 

If you look at the figure 1, you are very accurate in terms of light absorbance by a green plant. Like you mentioned, green leaf is rich in chlorophyll pigments (chlorophyll a, and b). These pigments absorb light energy at different wavelength. As you can see in the figure 1, the peak is maximum above 440 nm (blue color range) and 665 nm (red color range). Also, there is a slight bump 630 nm (orange color). This is a good indication that blue, orange, and red color is very important for photosynthesis and you are correct!

Also, there are other photosynthetic pigments such as Xanthophyll and carotenoids along with chlorophyll a and b. All these pigments absorb light energy of specific wavelength.

 

Figure 2 & 3 shows the light transmittance and absorbance of the red pigment. What do you understand from these two figures?