Historical review

The research group was founded by the Chemists Javier Abadía and Anunciación Abadía in 1988. The group has focused its research in studying the physiological mechanisms that plants elicit in response to environmental stress, including both scarcity and toxicity of metals (iron, manganese, etc.) as well as other abiotic stresses, such as salinity or drought. Always in the technical vanguard, the group started off by using chlorophyll fluorescence, high performance liquid chromatography and elemental analysis, later pioneering the application of cutting-edge mass spectrometry to Agricultural Sciences, including metabolomics and proteomics approaches. In 1996, the former PhD student of the group Fermin Morales (1988-1992), joined back after a post-doctoral stay in the University of Paris-Saclay. He introduced the application of remote sensing to study the effects of environmental stresses in agriculture, until he started off his own group in the Agrobiotechnology Institute (IdAB, CSIC- Navarra Government) in 2016. In 2006, another former PhD of the group, Ana Flor López-Millán (1996-2000) joined as staff scientist after a post-doctoral stay at the CNRC-USDA. She led proteomics section of the research group, and now is currently on personal leave since 2015. Ana Álvarez-Fernández joined the group as a post-doctoral researcher in 2001 after getting her PhD in 2000 in Autonomous University of Madrid, under the supervision of Prof. Juan José Lucena, an expert on micronutrient fertilizers, becoming staff scientist in 2007. Since then, she has taken the lead on spearheading the application of Mass Spectrometry and Metabolomics to Agricultural Sciences. In 2021, Anunciación Abadía retired and Jorge Rodríguez-Celma, a former Ph D student of the group (2007 - 2012), joined as staff scientist after two postdocs in the labs of experts on iron nutrition in plants, Janneke Balk (John Innes Centre & University of East Anglia) and Wolfgang Schmidt (Academia Sinica) followed by one year in the biomedical industry (Certest Biotec). Jorge started his research line using cutting edge molecular biology tools to study the regulation of iron homeostasis in plants.