Juliane

Antony van der Ent (Wageningen University and Research), Marnix Medema ( Wageningen University and Research) and Daan Weits (Utrecht University) received 800 000 € to develop their own innovative line of research and set up their own research group in the coming five years. Van der Ent and researcher want to resolve and comprehend, the ecology, physiology, and molecular biology of selenium hyperaccumulation, as a recent adaptation of plants to a highly selective environment. This information may be used in the future to improve the selenium status in crops to ultimately address selenium deficiency in humans. Medema and researcher will [...]

The project "CLOSE-UP! A close-up of unresponsive guard cells of plants grown at high humidity" is awarded to a consortium of researchers with Julian Verdonk (EPS en PE&RC member) as coordinator.  EPS members Joost Keurentjes ( Co-applicator), Leo Marcelis, Elias Kaiser en Paul Arens (joined EPS/PE&RC members) are part of this consortium.  The project investigates stomatal regulation in high air humidity, which contributes to better postharvest keeping quality of plant products, such as vase life of chrysanthemum. The second project investigates  lab grown fruits in analogy with lab-grown meat; imagine that we can produce fruits from a small piece of [...]

We are very happy to announce that Kaisa Kajala from Utrecht University will be the new coordinator for Theme 1 and are looking forward to organize plenty of interesting meetings with her. The recent Theme 1 symposium was the last of many that was organised from Remko Offringa, Professor for Plant Developmental Genetics at the University of Leiden. Together with the 2nd Theme 1 coordinator Dolf Weijers they welcomed the Keynote speakers Thorsten Hamann (NTNU, Norway) and Victoria Mironova (RU) as well as talented PhDs and postdocs to present their exciting results. At the end of the symposium Dolf thanked him in [...]

Congratulation to EPS member Corné Pieterse , Professor of Plant-Microbe Interactions at the University of Utrecht, who received the Spinoza Prize for his outstanding work on how plants protect themselves. The highest award in Dutch academia is focusing on fundamental scientific research ( provided by NWO) and comprise 2, 5 million euro funding.  More information you find here .