We gladly present the winners of the SPPS Prizes of 2022 that are given during the 29th SPPS conference!
Several prizes have been given: the Physiologia Plantarum prize, Early career prize, PhD prize, Innovation prize and SPPS prize. For some, the jury could not decide and 2 prizes were given!
Physiologia Plantarum Prize
The Physiologia Plantarum Prize is a monetary award to a scientist that has made outstanding contributions to
plant science in the areas that are covered by Physiologia Plantarum. Unlike the other awards, the Physiologia Plantarum Prize is open to researchers all over the world and also to non-SPPS members.
-Prof. Ana Cano-Delgado-
Phytohormones such as auxin, cytokinin or brassinosteroids are key regulators of plant growth, development and interactions with the environment. Brassinosteroids have been implicated in differentiation and adaptation to drought stress. Prof. Cano-Delgado´s research has been consistently at the forefront of scientific discovery by generating insights into the molecular mechanisms enabling brassinosteroids to perform their biological functions. More recently she has started to use the knowledge generated through basic research in model organisms to improve the performance of crop species that are affected by climate change.
Ana Cano-Delgado obtained her PhD Fellowship at the John Innes Foundation, Norwich (UK) followed by postdoctoral research at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, California, USA. Since 2004, she is a group leader at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) / Center for research in agricultural genomics (CRAG).
https://www.cragenomica.es/research-groups/brassinosteroid-signaling-in-plant-development
-Prof. Caixia Gao-
Production of plant-derived food becomes more and more challenging since most of the currently used crop varieties cannot adapt successfully to the consequences of climate change. While classical breeding-based approaches to crop improvement will continue to make significant contributions all possible opportunities to improve crop performance have to be explored. One of them being CRISPR-based targeted modification of crop species. Prof. Gao´s research has made seminal contributions, both with respect to improving reliability and precision of the tools used to perform CRISPR in crop plant species but also the actual development of new varieties. More importantly, her contributions to the development of the field and research community as a whole have the potential to make significant differences in the long term.
Caixia Gao is a principal investigator at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, CAS, China since 2009. She has previously been a postdoc and then group leader of plant transformation, Research Division, DLF-Trifolium Group, Denmark.
http://enpcce.genetics.cas.cn/PN/CXG/ACXG/
Early Career Prize
–Dr. Alizée Malnoë-
The early career prize has been awarded to Dr. Alizée Malnoë because of her (and her co-workers) work which has generated fundamental, novel and exciting insights into the mode of action of the photoprotective system.
The scent of forest, shiny Christmas balls, tinsel and homemade crackers – one of the highlights of Christmas is of course when the Christmas tree stands green and decorated in the house. With the help of the Nobel Prize-winning genetic scissors, assistant professor Alizée Malnoë at Umeå University, Sweden, wants to explore what makes the Christmas tree evergreen.
Alizée Malnoë is a photosynthesis researcher and comes from France. She has an engineering degree in agronomics from ENSA Toulouse and a doctoral degree from IBPC Paris. Since then, she has held a postdoctoral position at UC Berkeley in the United States.
The spruce retains the ability to perform photosynthesis in the winter even if the conditions are not good for carbon dioxide fixation. If the needles open their fissure openings to let in carbon dioxide, they can lose precious water that they cannot get back from the frozen ground. Recent studies have shown that the spruce’s photosynthetic apparatus during the winter is short-circuited in a special way to mitigate the risk that the excess absorbed light energy will be harmful.
Intensive work is underway at Umeå Plant Science Centre, UPSC, to establish the CRISPR-Cas9 technology in spruce.
“We intend to use the CRISPR-Cas9 genetic scissors to try to cleave the gene encoding chloroplastic lipocalin, LCNP. We know from our work with the model plant Arabidopsis that LCNP works as a kind of sunscreen for plants” says Alizée Malnoë, assistant professor at the Department of Plant Physiology at Umeå University.
“Then I ended up in the heaven of Christmas trees up here in Norrland, at the plant research centre UPSC at Umeå University. I started my research group in 2018 and think that the university offers a fantastic research environment with a good working climate that can be described as the “Umu spirit” and good opportunities for collaborations” says Alizée Malnoë.
SPPS Innovation Prize
-Prof. Søren Husted-
Manganese and phosphorus are chemical compounds essentially required in photosynthesis and plant adaptation to stress. Deficiencies in these compounds lead to significant reductions in crop yields but the deficiencies are not easily identified since they required in the past soil extraction analyses. Professor Husted has used his knowledge on photosynthesis and phosphorus/manganese metabolism to contribute to the development of handheld devices detecting deficiencies directly in (crop) plants. This work has also led to the establishment of two spin-out companies from the University of Copenhagen (NutriNostica, SpectraCrop), which are responsible for the production and marketing of the devices.
We are happy to announce that Søren is going to replace Jan Schjorring, who is retiring, as subject editor by the end of the year.
https://plen.ku.dk/english/research/plant_soil/pn/
SPPS PhD-Thesis Prize
-Dr. Bin Sun-
Plant growth and development involve the formation of different organs such as roots, leaves and flowers. Organ formation is regulated by many different molecular processes amongst them also those mediated by microProteins. Dr. Sun has investigated as part of his PhD thesis the microProtein miP1a-mediated processes regulating flowering. By combining forward genetics with genomics he identified novel regulatory components required for the control of flowering. By performing targeted functional studies he was able to generate exciting novel insights into their modes of action while in parallel investigating how a microProtein regulates plant architecture in monocotyledonous plants. The latter work is particularly exciting because it has shown that this particular microProtein regulates jasmonic acid (JA) signaling, which creates opportunities to regulate plant stress responses in a targeted manner.
He has now defended his thesis at Copenhagen University and is a current postdoctoral researcher at the EKU Tübingen in Marja Timmerman’s group.
-Dr. Kristoffer Jonsson-
Differential growth lies at the heart of different plant processes such as gravitropism, phototropism and apical hook formation during seedling germination. Dr. Jonsson initially investigated how the secretion of transporters for indole acetic acid is regulated during apical hook formation. He proceeded to discover a novel mechano-chemical feedback mechanism. This mechanism is responsible for coordinating changes in cell wall composition and structure in the apical hook area with controlled changes in auxin distribution. This coordination leads to adaptive changes and results in differential growth, a prerequisite for apical hook formation.
Kristoffer Jonsson defended his PhD thesis in June 2019 at the Umeå plant science center (Sweden) and is now pursuing his own postdoc project in the group of Anne-Lise Routier-Kierzkowska from the Plant Biology Research Institute at the Université de Montréal in Canada.
SPPS Prize
-Prof. Jan Schjørring-
Uptake of substances from the environment is a prerequisite for plant growth and development. Such substances include both inorganic compounds like minerals or metals but also organic substances such as nitrogen. A major focus of Prof. Schjørring´s research has been the uptake and utilization of nitrogen by plants as well as, more recently, investigations into the mode of action of cytosolic glutamine synthetase. The results of this work have dramatically increased our understanding of the underlying, physiological processes. In addition, his work has led to the development of remote sensing technology allowing monitoring of nitrogen status in wheat fields at a time when remote sensing technology was still in its infancy.
Jan Schjørring is Professor of Plant Nutrition at the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark).
Jan has also been a subject editor for Physiologia Plantarum for many years and will retire at the end of the year.