Research Professor at the Institute for Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology (IBMCP, CSIC-UPV) in Valencia (Spain). Director of the Laboratory of Biology and Biotechnology of Reproductive Development. Founder of Casa de la Ciència in Valencia. He was President of the European Plant Science Organization and the European Federation of Plant Biology Societies.
This monograph analyses the possibility of cultivating plants outside our planet Earth; presents advances in genome editing such as those that have allowed my laboratory to obtain seedless tomatoes; assesses strategies that should lead to more plentiful harvests using fewer resources; and explains biotechnological strategies to strengthen plants’ immune systems or to use them as biofactories in which we can harvest molecules of health or nutrition interest. Will that be enough? Will we make it in time?
Darwin carried out the first systematized study on the movement of climbing plants. Thanks to molecular analysis we have now begun to understand the genetic bases of circumnutation movement.