Stefanie Rosa

Water is essential for life, but some organisms can survive extreme dehydration, a phenomenon called anhydrobiosis. Orthodox plant seeds are remarkable examples, capable of enduring desiccation and surviving harsh conditions for years, even millennia. This ability allows seeds to remain dormant until favorable conditions arise. However, desiccation poses challenges, including oxidative stress and molecular damage, particularly to DNA. Damaged DNA can prevent germination and hinder development after rehydration, yet the mechanisms protecting DNA during these processes remain largely unknown. In this project, I aim to uncover the mechanisms that safeguard genome integrity in desiccated seeds and enable successful germination. By addressing this knowledge gap, we hope to improve seed vigor, longevity, and resilience in crops, contributing to agricultural productivity and global food security.

Paavo Penttilä

The FibForm project studies how plants can control the nanostructure of their cell walls, so that they obtain the desired strength and other properties. The idea behind my research is that the specific structure of hemicellulose polymers, a main component of plant cell walls, guides the building of cellulosic fibrillar structures. I plan to confirm this hypothesis by studying different kinds of plants and model systems, in which differences in the hemicelluloses result in different fibril morphologies. By better understanding the relationships between the chemical structure of the hemicelluloses and the resulting properties of the plant cell walls, we can develop plants for more sustainable agriculture.

Tanvi Taparia

Bioinoculants are teams of helpful microbes that protect plants and keep them healthy, even under stress. Yet, these microbial helpers often fail to work when moved from the predictable environment of a research lab to the complex conditions of a farmer’s field. Project Lab2Field explores the social lives of these helpful microbes—how they interact with plants, soils, and other local microbes, in real-world conditions. By uncovering the secrets to their social behaviour, we can create manuals for making these tiny helpers thrive. This will help create reliable and eco-friendly solutions for farmers to use bioinoculants in their fields with success. This research could reduce the need for chemicals like pesticides, promote organic farming practises, help crops adapt to climate change, and support more sustainable food production. 

Nelly S. Raymond

Bio-based fertilisers (BBF) offer a sustainable alternative to synthetic fertilisers, but their adoption is limited by a lack of understanding of their behaviour in soil. This is particularly crucial for phosphorus (P), a finite resource limiting crop productivity in 67% of soils. BBF adds significant carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) to soil, influencing nutrient cycling by microorganisms, key drivers of the P cycle. Their activity is often limited by C and N availability. Plant roots also supply labile C. PRIME-P aims to understand soil P cycling mediated by microorganisms in relation to C and N from BBF and plant roots. Using experimental and modelling approaches, PRIME-P will evaluate BBF and root exudates’ interaction on microbial P mobilisation. The project addresses critical soil-plant-microorganism interactions, paving the way for scalable, bio-based solutions to sustainable soil fertility and beyond.

Jazmin Ramos Madrigal

Plant domestication allowed the rise of complex societies. Large efforts have been made to understand the evolutionary processes behind plant domestication. However, a key aspect of plant domestication remains mainly unexplored: the role of the root microbiome. In this project, we will use legumes to study the coevolution of the plant-root microbiome interaction throughout the domestication process. As legumes recruit beneficial soil bacteria into specialised root structures, they provide and ideal contained system to study the plants and their microbiomes jointly through time. Using modern and ancient genomes, we will study wild and domesticated plants and their root microbes, characterise their domestication history, identify selection signatures correlating with changes in root microbial diversity, identify co-dispersion patterns, and develop an integrative model for plant domestication. By reconstructing the evolutionary history of plants’ beneficial associations with microbes, we will contribute to drawing a blueprint for replicating solutions evolution came up with, ultimately bringing us closer to robust sustainable agriculture.

Henriette Lyng Røder

A green transition to increased consumption of plant-based food products in our diet is pivotal for sustaining an increasing world population and mitigating climate change. Yet, many plant products are lost because of growth of unwanted microorganisms, requiring out-of-the-box thinking to establish new solutions. Because it is impossible to keep our plant products free of microorganisms, the goal of BIOBARRIER is to find out which microorganisms can be added to our fresh plant products to increase their shelf life instead of trying to remove all microorganisms – both the ones that are harmful and the ones that may safely help us. We will achieve this by creating specifically designed bacterial communities with beneficial properties that can be placed on fruits and vegetables to repel harmful microbes. Together with new beneficial bacterial uses such as probiotics, we will contribute to shifting consumers’ perspective on bacteria towards it being a positive addition to everyday products.

Bjørn Panyella Pedersen

The project will uncover the secrets of how plants transport sugars and the hormone auxin across membranes. This process is crucial for proper plant growth and development, but despite extensive research, the details of how this functions remain unclear.
Here we explore the 3D structures of key transporters to help us understand how substrates – including herbicides which utilize these transport systems – affect plant growth. This will allow us to predict and modify plant responses to changing environments, with significant implications for agriculture and sustainability.

Beyond practical applications, this research will provide a breakthrough in our understanding of fundamental plant metabolism, specifically in maintaining sugar and hormone balance. This knowledge is essential for addressing global challenges, such as ensuring sufficient food production while minimizing environmental impact. In essence, this project holds a key to a more sustainable and food-secure future.

Oliver Van Aken

Perhaps surprisingly, plants are sensitive to mechanical stimulation caused by wind, water drops, and gentle touching by insects or neighboring plants. Mechanical stimuli can change the plant’s physical appearance and flowering. ‘Touching’ may also increase plant resistance to pathogens, insects and abiotic stresses by stimulating its defense systems.

Very little is known about how plants detect mechanical stimuli, and how they induce physiological and molecular changes. Mechanical stimulation also has clear application potential, as controlled rolling has been widely used in Japanese grain agriculture to improve yield for centuries. The practical usefulness in Nordic agriculture is, however, unknown. This project aims to reveal the processes that control touch responses in plants, and exploit the potential of controlled mechanical treatment to improve sustainable agriculture.

Hussam Hassan Nour-Eldin

Anders Hafren

A striking global outlook change that manifested during the last decade is the reality of a changing climate and uncertainty of future. Sustainability and resilience are among the top priorities in plant science today, and for a reason. Despite that plants are master adapters to harsh environments and diseases through evolution and selection, this constellation does not apply to our food producing crops within an accelerated climate change frame. Thus, methods and knowledge of molecular mechanisms by which we can feasibly engineer our crops to meet these future challenges are urgently needed. Within this large global sustainability purpose, our predicted way to essential discoveries lies within the largely unknown lives of viruses and more precisely how they have learned through their amazing capacity for evolution to engineer their plant host. In particular, we hope that our focus on viral manipulations of plant resilience mechanisms may pave the way to climate, disease and virus resilient crops.