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Grant recipient

Stephan Wenkel

MORE – MicroProtein Engineering to Optimize Plant Development to Increase Resources
Grant amount: DKK 9,999,849
Stephan Wenkel says: “Growing enough plants for industrial use and the increasing human population is, in the face of climate change, one of the biggest challenges in the coming decades. The challenge is not only to produce more but also to conserve and protect ecosystems from being converted into agricultural land. To meet this challenge, novel plant varieties with optimized features are needed. In the past 10 years, our laboratory has identified and characterized microProteins, which are small regulatory proteins that strongly control the growth behaviour of plants. By altering the expression and activity of these microProteins, we aim to control specific traits of crop plants. In the future, such optimized varieties may be more resistant to environmental challenges and use less space to produce equal yield.”
Stephan Wenkel
Stephan Wenkel
PhD, associate professor Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of Copenhagen