Adelaide Research & Scholarship
Adelaide Research & Scholarship (AR&S) is the University of Adelaide’s digital repository. AR&S provides a platform for the collection, organisation, access and preservation of the research and scholarly outputs of the University community in digital formats, as well as digital management of information in physical formats.
University of Adelaide higher degree by research theses are deposited into the AR&S Theses community as part of the final thesis lodgement process.
AR&S also serves as the home of the digital collections of University Library Archives and Special Collections. Items include digitized representations of physical items, such as photographs and full texts, and digital-born materials, allowing worldwide access to our heritage and research collections.
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Recent Submissions
Water pricing and markets: Principles, practices and proposals
(Wiley, 2025) Wheeler, S.A.; Nauges, C.; Grafton, R.Q.
The allocation of water across space and time is a key challenge of water governance, with demand and supply often not well matched over time and place. Best practice water pricing and markets may promote water conservation, yet their application is limited. We highlight the governance principles needed for best practice water pricing and water markets, describe differences across regions, and provide six key water demand governance recommendations for both Global North and Global South countries.
Energy and fertigation consumption and economic viability of a light blocking film in greenhouse lettuce production
(Elsevier, 2024) He, J.; Lin, T.; Liang, W.; Chavan, S.; Sethuvenkatraman, S.; Goldsworthy, M.; Tissue, D.; Chen, Z.H.
High-technology greenhouses offer a promising avenue for enhancing global food security, yet their high operational energy costs, associated with cooling, remain a significant barrier to extensive utilisation in crop production, particularly in warm regions. This study evaluates the impact of Light Blocking Film (LBF) and different cooling technologies on lettuce production in high-technology greenhouses in Australia. The effect of LBF on cooling energy reduction and crop yield variation was evaluated over three lettuce trials, and the results were used to assess the commercial feasibility. LBF was found to slightly reduce average cooling energy expenditure and the average fertigation use by 24.2%. Despite these savings, LBF led to decreased crop yields of 6.2%–14% across three seasons and three different cultivars, highlighting a trade-off between resource use efficiency and productivity. Economic modelling indicates that integrating LBF with fan-pad systems could achieve a net present value of $1013 per m2, and a benefit-cost ratio of 2.11 through the lifespan. Conversely, the system combining LBF with fan-coil units showed a longer payback period of more than 17 years, emphasizing the importance of system compatibility. The study highlights the necessity for precision in the choice of greenhouse technologies to balance energy and resource sustainability with crop productivity. These findings serve as a guide for optimizing technology deployment in protected cropping systems to maximize agricultural, environmental and economic benefits.
Manipulating adsorbed hydrogen for enhanced HMF electrocatalytic hydrogenation
(Elsevier, 2025) Gao, Y.; Tang, C.; Zheng, Y.
5-Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), derived from biomass, is a promising sustainable resource that can be converted into valuable chemical compounds. One such compound, 2,5-dihydroxymethylfuran (DHMF), produced through the electrocatalytic hydrogenation of HMF, is widely used in industrial polymer manufacturing. However, the hydrogenation of high-concentration HMF remains challenging due to the tendency for undesirable dimerization. Acknowledging the critical role of adsorbed hydrogen (H*) in HMF hydrogenation, a series of transition metal-doped dual-cubic Cu electrocatalysts (M-Cu, where M = Mo, Pd, Pt, Au, and Ag) were synthesized to systematically investigate the effect of varying H* reactivity on HMF hydrogenation. A pronounced correlation between DHMF selectivity and H* coverage was observed. Increasing H* coverage can enhance the selectivity for DHMF and prevent undesired dimerization of adsorbed HMF molecules. While elevated H* coverage enhanced DHMF selectivity, excessive coverage adversely impacted Faradaic efficiency due to competing hydrogen evolution reaction. This underscores the critical importance of finely tuning H* coverage. The optimal electrocatalyst, achieved by fine-tuning the doping amount of Pt on Cu, demonstrated a Faradaic efficiency of over 90% for DHMF in high-concentration HMF at −0.3 V, marking the highest record reported to date.
Genomic and evolutionary evidence for drought adaptation of grass allopolyploid Brachypodium hybridum
(Oxford University Press, 2025) Wang, Y.; Chen, G.; Zeng, F.; Deng, F.; Yang, Z.; Han, Z.; Xu, S.; Nevo, E.; Catalán, P.; Chen, Z.-H.; Zhang, J.
Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of drought worldwide, threatening the environmental resilience of cultivated grasses. However, the genetic diversity in many wild grasses could contribute to the development of climate-adapted varieties. Here, we elucidated the impact of polyploidy on drought responses using allotetraploid Brachypodium hybridum (B. hybridum) and its progenitor diploid species Brachypodium stacei (B. stacei). Our findings suggest that progenitor species’ genomic legacies resulting from hybridization and whole-genome duplications conferred greater ecological adaptive advantages to B. hybridum compared with B. stacei. Genes related to stomatal regulation and the immune response from S-subgenomes were under positive selection during speciation, underscoring their evolutionary importance in adapting to environmental stresses. Biased expression in polyploid subgenomes (B. stacei-type and B. distachyon-type) significantly influenced differential gene expression, with the dominant subgenome exhibiting more differential expression. B. hybridum adapted a drought escape strategy characterized by higher photosynthetic capacity and lower intrinsic water-use efficiency than B. stacei, driven by a highly correlated coexpression network involving genes in the circadian rhythm pathway. In summary, our study shows the influence of polyploidy on ecological and environmental adaptation and resilience in model Brachypodium grasses. These insights hold promise for informing the breeding of climate-resilient cereal crops and pasture grasses.
Guard cell and subsidiary cell sizes are key determinants for stomatal kinetics and drought adaptation in cereal crops
(Wiley, 2024) Rui, M.; Chen, R.; Jing, Y.; Wu, F.; Chen, Z.H.; Tissue, D.; Jiang, H.; Wang, Y.
Climate change-induced drought is a major threat to agriculture. C₄ crops have a higher water use efficiency (WUE) and better adaptability to drought than C₃ crops due to their smaller stomatal morphology and faster response. However, our understanding of stomatal behaviours in both C₃ and C₄ Poaceae crops is limited by knowledge gaps in physical traits of guard cell (GC) and subsidiary cell (SC). We employed infrared gas exchange analysis and a stomatal assay to explore the relationship between GC/SC sizes and stomatal kinetics across diverse drought conditions in two C₃ (wheat and barley) and three C₄ (maize, sorghum and foxtail millet) upland Poaceae crops. Through statistical analyses, we proposed a GCSC-τ model to demonstrate how morphological differences affect stomatal kinetics in C₄ Poaceae crops. Our findings reveal that morphological variations specifically correlate with stomatal kinetics in C₄ Poaceae crops, but not in C₃ ones. Subsequent modelling and experimental validation provide further evidence that GC/SC sizes significantly impact stomatal kinetics, which affects stomatal responses to different drought conditions and thereby WUE in C₄ Poaceae crops. These findings emphasize the crucial advantage of GC/SC morphological characteristics and stomatal kinetics for the drought adaptability of C₄ Poaceae crops, highlighting their potential as future climate-resilient crops.