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Ph.D. Candidate at Roots Lab

310 Tyson Building

Pennsylvania State University

Publications

2023

  • Jagdeep Singh Sidhu, Ivan Lopez-Valdivia, Christopher F Strock, Hannah M Schneider, Jonathan Lynch. 2023. Cortical parenchyma wall width (CPW) regulates root metabolic cost and maize performance under suboptimal water availability. biorxiv Full Record

  • Ivan Lopez-Valdivia; Xiyu Yang; Jonathan P. Lynch. 2023. Large root cortical cells and reduced cortical cell files improve growth under suboptimal nitrogen in silico. Plant Physiology, Full Record

  • Miguel Vallebueno-Estrada; Guillermo G. Hernández-Robles; Eduardo González-Orozco; Ivan Lopez-Valdivia; Teresa Rosales Tham; Víctor Vásquez Sánchez; Kelly Swarts; Tom D. Dillehay; Jean-Philippe Vielle-Calzada; Rafael Montiel. 2023. Domestication and lowland adaptation of coastal preceramic maize from Paredones, Peru. eLife, Full Record

2022

  • Lopez-Valdivia Ivan, Alden Perkins, Hannah Schneider, Miguel Vallebueno-Estrada, James Burridge, Eduardo González-Orozco, Aurora Montufar, Rafael Montiel, Jonathan Lynch, Jean-Philippe Vielle-Calzada. 2022. Gradual domestication of root traits in the earliest maize from Tehuacan. PNAS Vol. 119 No. 17 e2110245119 Full Record

2019

  • Lopez-Valdivia Ivan (2019) Caracterización de raíces milenarias de maíz provenientes de Tehuacán: comparación con poblaciones actuales del género Zea. CINVESTAV. Mexico. Tesis de Maestria. Full Record

About

Maize fields at The Russell E. Larson Agricultural Research Center at Rock Springs, Penn State University
Maize fields at The Russell E. Larson Agricultural Research Center at Rock Springs, Penn State University

I’m a Mexican Ph.D. student devoted to understanding the physiological and morphological root adaptations along the domestication and dispersion of maize and wheat. I use greenhouse, field, and modeling approaches to study the role of root anatomy, architecture, and physiology in the adaptation to abiotic stress.

Sampling Wheat roots at CIMMYT Obregon Station 2023
Sampling Wheat roots at CIMMYT Obregon Station 2023

I’m doing my doctoral thesis under the mentorship of Jonathan Lynch at Pennsylvania State University where we implement high-throughput phenotyping of root systems to capture the variation of root phenes (most elemental components of the phenotype), their interactions, and functions under abiotic stress.

Sampling maize roots at Penn State Greenhouse 2021
Sampling maize roots at Penn State Greenhouse 2021

Before coming to Penn State University I studied a master degree in Plant Biotechnology at LANGEBIO Cinvestav where I characterized the root anatomy and architecture of 5000-year-old maize specimens coming from the San Marcos cave at Tehuacan Valley. I performed this research at Paleogenomics Lab and Apomixis Lab at LANGEBIO, and in collaboration with the Roots Lab at Penn State University. We found evidences that the root traits were domesticated gradually in maize. Further information can be found here. I was so fortunate to share my master thesis work at “Sexto Congreso Internacional El patrimonio Cultural y las nuevas tecnologias” where I talked in detail about how root traits were affected gradually during the domestication of maize.

Master thesis defense at CINVESTAV-Langebio auditorium and oral presentation in Sexto Congreso Internacional El Patrimonio Cultural y las nuevas tecnologias. 2019
Master thesis defense at CINVESTAV-Langebio auditorium and oral presentation in Sexto Congreso Internacional El Patrimonio Cultural y las nuevas tecnologias. 2019

“La gente, hecha de maíz, hace el maíz.

La gente, creada de la carne y los colores del maíz,

cava una cuna para el maíz, y lo cubre de buena

tierra y lo limpia de malas hierbas y lo riega y le

habla palabras que lo quieren.

Y cuando el maíz esta crecido, la gente de maíz lo

muele sobre la piedra y lo alza y lo aplaude, y lo

acuesta al amor del fuego y se le come, para que en

la gente de maíz siga el maíz caminando sin morir

sobre la tierra”

Eduardo Galeano