Agriculture is facing major challenges: It needs to feed a growing world population, become ecologically sustainable and withstand the changes brought about by the climate crisis. Rye could possibly be part of the solution: "Until the middle of the 20th century, rye was a key part of our agriculture," says Bernd Hackauf from the Julius Kühn Institute (JKI), "since then it has lost a lot of its importance."
Leibniz Prize for Marburg bioengineer
Plants have the ability to bind carbon dioxide from the air through photosynthesis. The same applies to algae and bacteria, which bind around 70 gigatons of carbon per year through photosynthetic CO2 fixation, the so-called Calvin cycle, and thus remove it from the atmosphere. The metabolic pathways of the microorganisms that achieve this impressive feat are the focus of Tobias Erb's research. The Marburg microbiologist is primarily dedicated to the processes involved in the conversion of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and is redesigning them.