The Graduate School Experimental Plant Sciences (EPS)
Het Klokhuis is a very popular TV show among primary school children in the Netherlands, because they explain all sorts of difficult (scientific) concepts in a very appealing way with lots of humor and funny videos in between. Each year they nominate several projects for the Klokhuis Science Prize, and the winner gets an episode dedicated to their research project.
The Seed lab, Plant Physiology (Wageningen University & Research) entered a project about seed germination for the Klokhuis Science Prize 2023 and was nominated. You can help to decide whether Het Klokhuis will make an episode about their seed research, by voting on their project via this link: www.hetklokhuis.nl/dossier/153/klokhuis-wetenschapsprijs. Deadline is 19th of March.
Hoe weet een zaadje of het wel of niet moet kiemen? / How does a seed know whether or not it should germinate?
Although seeds are extremely important for growing our vegetables, we don’t know how a seed decides to germinate. To turn germination on or off, the plant has special switches. By examining how these switches work, we can find out exactly when and how the seed decides to germinate. This allows us to produce seeds that will also germinate in poor conditions, such as drought or heat. This is very important because climate change is causing longer and longer periods of drought or extreme rainfall.