My name is Udi Zurgil. I was born in Israel and spent my childhood at nearby Kibbutz Sde Boker. I attended high school at Eshel HaNasi, where I first encountered the interesting field of biology. Later, I joined the artillery core for 2.5 years for my mandatory army service. I spent my early 20s back in my home kibbutz, working in adhesive tape manufacturing. At the age of 27, I moved to Tel Hai where I did my bachelor’s degree in biotechnology, which I completed with Honors. Next, I moved back home and started my master’s degree in health science and cancer research. In my second year, I was in charge of helping a group of 18-year-olds in my kibbutz as they lived and worked together as part of the kibbutz community. At the end of this year, I met my wife Orly. We got married after one year and have four children, two boys and two girls. My master’s degree flowed directly into a PhD in the same field. In 2014, I finished my thesis and started searching for work close to my kibbutz or in Beer Sheva. I was selected by Noemi Tel-Zur and Avi Golan to be the technician in their labs. Most of my work revolves around cacti and chines jujube, for Noemi’s lab. In the pitaya plants, we crossbreed cultivars to produce more successful lines for farmers. We also test the different cultivars for stress resistance. Recently, we have been working on the description of an endogenous time-keeping mechanism based on a 24-h cycle controlling two different flower opening times in heterodichogamous species. For this, we are following the flowering in the “Lang” and “Ben Li” jujube cultivars.

In the last few years, I have joined a new lab under the direction of Ilya Gelfand. There we are working on detecting and understanding the effects that drought/rewetting cycles have on the biogeochemistry of soil greenhouse gas emissions in agricultural land and in uncultivated desert soils.

For both labs, most of my time is spent helping students with the setup of their projects, and with learning how to adopt different methods of measurement in the lab and in the field. My hobby is playing basketball, which I do almost every week.

Srinivasan J, Khadka J, Novoplansky N, Gillor O, Grafi G. 

Zygophyllum dumosum is a dominant shrub in the Negev Desert whose survival is accomplished by multiple mechanisms that act together and in concert with seasonal climate change to bring about stress tolerance.These include abscission of leaflets to reduce transpiration while leaving the fleshy, wax-covered petioles alive but dormant during the dry season. Petioles display a remarkable survival capacity and can endure for two full growing seasons while maintaining cell component integrity during the dry season and resuming metabolic activity at the beginning of the wet season. This remarkable survival prompted us to initiate a collaborative work with Prof. Gillor (ZIWR) and investigate endophytic bacteria colonizing the internal tissues of the petiole and assess their potential role in stress tolerance. Twenty-one distinct endophytes, identified by sequencing of the 16S rDNA, were isolated and clustered into two phyla, Firmicutes and Actinobacteria. Most isolated endophytes displayed relatively slow growth on nutrient agar, which was accelerated by adding petiole extracts. Metabolic analysis of selected endophytes showed several common metabolites whose level is affected by petiole extract in a species-dependent manner, including phosphoric acid, pyroglutamic acid, and glutamic acid. Other metabolites appear to be endophyte-specific, such as proline and trehalose, which were implicated in stress tolerance. These results demonstrate the existence of multiple endophytic bacteria colonizing Z. dumosum petioles with a potential role in maintaining cell integrity and functionality via the synthesis of multiple beneficial metabolites that mitigate stress and contribute to stress tolerance.

We proposed a quantitative method to map the potential atmospheric water harvesting for a reference surface in deserts throughout the world based on the local weather conditions. Such a map will help determine ideal locations for atmospheric water harvesting, and places where more energy will have to be invested to produce freshwater. We hypothesize that atmospheric water harvesting would be possible in a large fraction of desert areas.

The scope of this proposal is to study guided sunlight for indoor small-scale farming. We will use concentrator with a solar tracker and optical fiber to deliver the sunlight indoors. 

The objectives are to develop an optical in and out fiber coupling system, allocate potential crops and develop an indoor terrarium and demonstrate an actual grow cycle of the plant of choice.