Institute of Bio- and Geosciences (IBG)

Plant Sciences (IBG-2)

Research activities of IBG-2 highly visible at the 2nd European Congress on Photosynthesis Research

Five current and former members of IBG-2 (Shoot Dynamics, Alternative Biomass) participated in the 2^nd European Congress on Photosynthesis Research (ePS2) in Padua, Italy. With three oral presentations and two poster presentations, IBG-2 was strongly represented and appreciated in the European photosynthesis research community.

After a long break due to COVID-19, the European Congress on Photosynthesis Research was held in Padua (Italy) between 25th and 28th June, 2024. The Congress was preceded by a 2-days Young Session (24th-25th) showcasing research projects of PhD students and early-career postdocs. Two PhD students from Shoot Dynamics, Deepthi Konche and Andrea Lodetti, joined the Young Session, together with our former PhD student and postdoc, Yuxi Niu (Shoot Dynamics, Alternative Biomass) who recently defended her PhD at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and is now working at the Wageningen University & Research. During the main Congress Deepthi and Shizue Matsubara gave oral presentation in the Climate Change session chaired by Ülo Niinemets (Estonian University of Life Science). Deepthi reported positive effects of elevated CO2 to mitigate Cercospora infection in sugar beet (Picture 1), which she had studied in the BreedFACE at the Campus Klein-Altendorf. Shizue presented the PhD study of Ana Carolina dos Santos Sá (Shoot Dynamics) who explored natural variation in photosynthetic response of Arabidopsis to nighttime warming by combining genome-wide association study (GWAS) and genomic prediction, partly assisted by the Jülich Supercomputing Centre. The European project DREAM, in which three members of Shoot Dynamics (Shizue, Andrea and Uwe Rascher) actively participate, was prominent in the New Technologies session chaired by Tomas Morosinotto (University of Padua) (Picture 2). In this session our former colleague Ladislav Nedbal (Alternative Biomass) introduced “Alternating Current Biology” to the audience, highlighting the power of frequency-domain analysis for investigating regulatory mechanisms in photosynthesis. The posters of Andrea and Yuxi elegantly illustrated the frequency-domain analysis of chlorophyll fluorescence in Arabidopsis. Four days of scientific discussions and lively interactions were followed by a gala dinner in the historical Caffè Pedrocchi to close the Congress with success.