Food, feed, fibers and fuel: with demand growing, agriculture has a key role to play in the future of humanity and our planet. At the same time, the increasing scarcity of arable land and the impact of climate change are bringing problems such as drought, heat and other extreme weather events. In the PhenoRob Cluster of Excellence, therefore, researchers from different disciplines are working toward a common goal: unlocking more sustainable crop production with limited resources and thus shrinking the environmental footprint caused by cultivating plants. To this end, they are harnessing innovative digital technologies, including some from the world of robotics and artificial intelligence.

Prof. Wulf Amelung and Prof. Frank Ewert from INRES are included in the international "Highly Cited Researchers" ranking this year. They are considered to be particularly influential in science.

The state awards were presented as part of the ceremonial events surrounding the start of the academic year at the University of Bonn. The purses connected with these awards, going to outstanding young researchers, are endowed by the respective presenting national governments. These awards are traditionally presented simultaneous with the awarding of the DAAD Prize by the German Academic Exchange Service.

A new study by the University of Bonn and the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) in Gatersleben sheds light on the mechanism used by plants to monitor how much of the nutrient phosphate is available, and to decide when strategies to mobilize and take up more phosphate from the soil must be activated. The enzyme ITPK1 plays a key role in this process. The researchers were also able to show that a particular group of signaling molecules involved in phosphate sensing respond very sensitively to phosphate and that this regulation takes place not only in plants but also in human cells. In the long term, the results could lead to the breeding of new crop varieties that require less phosphate fertilizer. The final version of the study has now been published in the journal "Molecular Plant".

The importance of the root system for agricultural yields is often underestimated. Whether roots can access water and nutrients effectively also determines the resilience of important crops to drought and climate change. Researchers from the Universities of Bonn and Bologna (Italy) have discovered and described a mutant in barley: Its roots grow downwards much more sharply than usual. This discovery potentially provides a starting point for breeding more drought-resistant varieties. The study has now been published in PNAS.

The Federal Minister of Education and Research, Anja Karliczek, has visited the University of Bonn. The focus was on the developments in the Excellence Strategy. The University of Bonn had emerged from the current competition of the federal and state governments as the most successful applicant with six clusters of excellence and the status of a University of Excellence.

Jupiter’s clouds have water conditions that would allow Earth-like life to exist, but this isn’t possible in Venus’ clouds, according to the groundbreaking finding of new research led by a Queen’s University Belfast scientist with participation of the University of Bonn. The study has been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Mythological nymphs reincarnate as a group of corn smut proteins to launch a battle on maize immunity. One of these proteins appears to stand out among its sister Pleiades, much like its namesake character in Greek mythology. This is shown by a recent study led by the GMI – Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in which the University of Bonn was also involved. The results are published in the journal PLOS Pathogens.