Of all grains, wheat provides the world's highest yield after corn. With 730 million tonnes in the 2018/19 crop year, it makes a significant contribution to securing the world's food supply. But climatic changes and extreme weather events in particular are a growing threat to harvests. Areas under cultivation are also dwindling due to soil degradation and sealing. Pest infestation is making life even more difficult for plants.
Versatile composite materials from coffee grounds
For breakfast, after dinner or just in between: coffee is the most popular hot drink in Germany. For 72% of Germans, the energizing brown drink is part of everyday life. As a result, the average person consumes 165 litres of coffee per year. However, the leftover coffee grounds usually end up in the waste. Using this waste material as a resource for new bio-based materials and products has become an exciting field of research.
Creating new microbial bio-factories
“Microbes can do more” could be the motto of the "Microbial Biofabrics for the Industrial Bioeconomy" funding program of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Its goal is to identify previously not industrially used microorganisms and to optimize them in order to create new products or processes. Bacteria from the Bacteroidetes group might have this potential, which the "BaPro" project now hopes to exploit.
Plant protection with microgels
The use of pesticides in agriculture has long been controversial because they are both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, they protect plants from pests and diseases, but on the other hand they are proven to harm the environment: soils are poisoned and biodiversity is decimated. As a result of climate change, plants are becoming even more susceptible to pests, driving up the use of pesticides. But it is also a fact that crop protection products are in some cases indispensable to ensure that the world's population can continue to be fed in the future.
Cell factory for hot and acidic
Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis oder Saccharomyces cerevisiae – the names of some industrially used microorganisms have been encountered even by laymen. What these three have in common is that they prefer rather mild growth or reaction conditions. They are usually unsuitable for processes or products that require elevated temperatures or special pH values. The situation is different with so-called thermoacidophilic archaeae, to which Sulfolobus acidocaldarius belongs.
Smart analysis of microbial data treasures
Jörg Overmann is Scientific Director of the Leibniz Institute DSMZ-German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures GmbH and leads the world's most diverse archive for biological resources. Microorganisms and cell cultures are collected, researched, and archived at the Braunschweig research institute. With the project DiASPora (Digital Approaches for the Synthesis of Poorly Accessible Biodiversity Information), a team led by Overmann was successful in the Leibniz Competition 2019 and is being funded with 1 million euros.
Customizing green packaging
From egg boxes and coffee capsules to technical packaging: with innovative and sustainable packaging solutions PAPACKS wants to make the world a little greener. The vision of founder and CEO Tahsin Dag and his team is to avoid plastic. The Cologne-based company, which was founded in 2013, relies exclusively on natural resources and residues, mainly from agriculture, which are processed into intelligent packaging through a special fibre casting process.
New impulses for electrobiotechnology
For some time, electrobiotechnology research teams have been investigating how electric power from microbial metabolic processes can be utilized. It is thought possible to use this electricity for the biotechnological production of oxygen-sensitive enzymes or biochemicals. The key is to remove the oxygen from the bacterial metabolism. In the "e-MICROBe" project, biochemist Miriam Agler-Rosenbaum from the University of Jena is researching how this can be achieved.
Building houses from fungi
Fungi are usually eaten or used to make cheese or beer. However, for Vera Meyer they are more than that. As a biotechnologist and artist, she is well aware of the diversity of the species and their potential, for the bioeconomy in particular. This is because fungi can not only be used to produce new composites and packaging, but also clothing, furniture and building materials. Meyer's vision of living in fungi houses not only drives her research: as an artist, she forms these multi-talents into sculptures in order to bring the diversity of fungi to a wider public.
The smut whisperer
Plant parasites have always been a plague for farmers. One of the most dangerous parasites are smuts, which preferentially infest food crops such as grain or corn. They attack the inside of plant cells and block the plant's defenses. However, they are very selective when it comes to choosing a host plant and are therefore difficult to control. Jan Schirawski, a geneticist from Jena, has specialized in the genome of smut.