Large network grant to PlantLink led consortium, meeting “Promoting Plant Research in Sweden” in Lund 15-16 March,VR, Formas, PPP and a H2020 – lots of plant research proposal granted this fall! and more in this month’s newsletter.
- PlantLink led consortium receives 10.5+5.4 MNOK from NordForsk!
- Register for “Promoting Plant Research in Sweden” in Lund 15-16 March
- VR, Formas, PPP and a H2020 – lots of plant research proposal granted this fall!
- New server Udda!
- ELLS meeting in Copenhagen
- Ramune Kuktaite new MAXIV coordinator
- Scandinavian perspectives of plant gene technology
- ScanOats now going online!
- NOVA PhD course, “Phenotyping Technologies in Plant-environment Interactions – Integrated Analysis of Omics Data”, 11-15 June
- Summer school in Warsaw “Genomics for Plant Breeding and Biotechnology” 19-25 August 2018
- PhD course Plant Protection Biology, 20-31 August, 2018
- Registration is now open for the Plant Biology Europe 2018 conference!
- Increased focus on Urban Farming
- Looking for an MSc project? Look here!
- #metoo
- PlantLink researcher in the spotlight Therese Bengtsson
- Upcoming meetings and events
**PlantLink led consortium receives 10.5+5.4 MNOK from NordForsk!**
Last week, a PlantLink-led consortium was granted no less than 15.9 MNOK over 3+3 years! The competition was stiff with only 6 out of 63 applications granted. Starting from 1 January 2018 the project ”NordPlant – A Climate and Plant Phenomics Hub for Sustainable Agriculture and Forest Production in Future Nordic Climates” will create a research network focusing on plant phenotyping and growth facilities.
In the NordPlant consortium, five Nordic universities with versatile and complementing research infrastructures are joining forces to promote education, research mobility and technological development to meet future challenges in agriculture and forestry. Recently established facilities for both plant phenomics and climate modelling are key parts of this project. Apart from LU and SLU, NordPlant consists of UiT in Tromsö, University of Helsinki and University of Copenhagen. This will have a large impact on PlantLink’s future work. More information on NordPlant will come later and during the meeting “Promoting Plant Research in Sweden”, see next piece of news.
**Register for “Promoting Plant Research in Sweden” in Lund 15-16 March**
PlantLink will host a national plant network meeting in Lund with the title”Promoting Plant Research in Sweden”. During this meeting we will discuss how to strengthen the position of Swedish plant research to stakeholders and funding bodies both on the national and European level. The meeting will include the following themes:
1) New Swedish plant research initiatives
2) Swedish plant research in a European/Global perspective
3) Outreach, stakeholders and how to build a strong network
4) Creating Swedish Plant Biology days
The meeting is open for plant scientists in academia and industry.
Speakers who accepted are representatives of ScanOats, European Plant Science Organisation (EPSO), MaxIV, EMPHASIS, Mistra Biotech, Lantmännen, more to come! Information and registration here
**VR, Formas, PPP and a H2020 – lots of plant research proposal granted this fall!**
PlantLink would like to congratulate all grant receiver in the plant sciences at LU and SLU Alnarp!
| Löfstedt | Christer | LU, VR | Från sekvens till funktion – evolution av feromonreceptorer i ett molekylärt perspektiv | 4 100 000 |
| Van Aken | Olivier | LU, VR | Utforskande av signallering från organell till kärna i växter under stress | 3 518 000 |
| Eva | Johansson | SLU, Formas | Livsmedelssäkerhet genom växtförädling – nya gener för gulrost-resistens i vete | 2 999 715 |
| Mulatu Geleta | Dida | SLU, Formas | Ökad förståelse för drösfasthet, grobarhet, blomstängelslängd och frökapseltäthet genom kvantitativ kopplingsanalys och genomjämförelse i Lepidium campestre: en framtida oljegröda under domesticering | 2 976 099 |
| Allan | Rasmusson | LU, Formas | Att matcha växter till symbionter; Sockerbetors genetiska kapacitet att dra nytta av tillväxthöjande svamp-symbios. | 1 998 592 |
| Marie | Dacke | LU, Formas | Mot miljövänligare jordbruk: utseende och doft av rapsblommor från skadegöraren och pollinatorns perspektiv. | 2 974 926 |
| Urban | Johanson | LU, Formas | TRP-jonkanaler i skalbaggar – målproteiner för nya repellenter inom skogsbruket | 2 586 000 |
| Yann | Clough | LU, Formas | Effekter av framtidens reformer av den gemensamma jordbrukspolitiken på biologisk mångfald och ekosystemtjänster i skogsbygder | 2 226 684 |
| Larisa | Gustavsson | SLU, Formas | ´Omics´ grepp för kontroll av fruktträdskräfta i Svensk äppleproduktion | 2 996 412 |
| Beatrix | Alsanius | SLU, Formas | Skenet kan bedra – men doften avslöjar kontaminerade bladgrönsaker | 2 999 187 |
| Janne | Rinne | LU, Formas | Mot full förståelse av boreala skogar som en del av klimatsystemet : Rollen av biogena flyktiga organiska föreningar | 2 980 941 |
| Elina | Andersson | LU, Formas | Skadedjursbekämpning och miljörättvisa i ett förändrat klimat – med fokus på Uganda | 2 932 296 |
| Therese | Bengtsson | SLU, Formas | ”Resistance Gene Array” en riktad strategi för att fånga upp växtresistensgener | 2 923 935 |
| Nicoletta | Faraone | LU, Formas | Giftiga cyanobakteriers inverkan på pollinatörer: effekter på bin, pollinering och skörd. | 2 997 726 |
| Grenville-Briggs Didymus | Laura | SLU, VR dev res | Mot en hållbar produktion av kakao i Västafrika: Storskalig drona fenotypning och ´omics-metoder som hjälpmedel för att studera kakaosjukdomar | 3 300 000 |
| Ortiz Rios | Rodomiro Octavio | SLU, VR dev res | Genomisk förutsägelse att leverera värme tolerant vete till Senegal avrinningsområde | 5 600 000 |
| Rui | Guan | SLU, Formas mobility | Utveckling av icke-glaucous rapslinjer genom genredigering för att förbättra motståndskraft mot patogen och reducera kemiska besprutningar | 4 154 748 |
| Samnegård | Ulrika | SLU, Formas mobility | Deconstructing pollinator performance: Understanding the context dependency of crop pollination success | 4 358 824 |
I hope we did not miss anyone. Please let us know. Also feel free to contact us regarding any updates in your projects suitable for the newsletter.
Apart from these grants the following three projects in the Public-Private Partnership in Pre-Breeding have been granted:
Combining Knowledge from Field and from Laboratory for Pre-breeding in Barley III: Genomics Assisted Pre-breeding (GAP) for Nordic Spring Barley [Ahmed (Project Coordinator), Inger Åhman(Leader Work Package: Image-analysis for phenotyping of fast seedling growth and increased number of fertile tillers), Therese Bengtsson (Leader Work Package 5: Data management and association mapping + Leader Work Package 8: Maintenance and distribution of seed] Budget: DKK 17.010.255 in total
6P-2: Nordic Public Private 2 Partnership Phenotyping Project [Aakash Chawade (WP Responsible for deliverable: Adaptation of image recognition to pre-breeding), Erik Alexandersson] Budget: DKK 12.195.964 in total
NordFruit: Pre-breeding for future challenges in Nordic fruit and berries [Kimmo Rumponen (Leader Work Package 2: Phenotyping + Task 4.1 Development apple germplasm), Larisa Gustavsson (Task 3.2: Validation of molecular markers …), Ibrahim Tahir] Budget: DKK 11.400.000 in total.
Finally, we send our big congrats to Christer Löfstedt who successfully received an EU H2020 grant. This collaborative project between five European universities and four companies, aims to mass-produce insect pheromones by biological means. The goal is that cheap and environmentally friendly pheromones will replace toxic pesticides in the fight against harmful insects in agriculture and forestry. Christer Löfstedt at the Lund Institute of Biology receives over 12 million SEK in project funding, which in total is more than €7 million. More here (in Swedish).
**New server Udda**
We are setting up a new computer server, which will be named Udda after senior plant researcher Udda Lundquist who among other things has done extensive work categorizing and organizing barley mutants. Udda has let us know that she is pleased to let her first name to this new resource. It is a powerful new server placed at SLU Alnarp with 576 CPUs, 640 GB RAM and 11 TB HDD + 400 GB SSD disk space! It is made possible through a contribution from Kungliga Fysiografiska Sällskapet.
Please note that to request Bioinformatics support (which from this year is only 25% supported from PlantLink and 75% from SLU) you will from now on have to fill in a short form found here: https://www.plantlink.se/about/bioinformatics-support/
**ELLS meeting in Copenhagen**
The annual ELLS (Euroleague for Life Sciences) meeting was held in Copenhagen 16-17 November. During this meeting we met within the Subject Area group “Plant Molecular Breeding and Biotechnology”, and we are happy to announce that ELLS have kindly granted us funding to run the MSc summer course in 2018 in Warsaw for the first time. See below. We are also working on the establishment of a new subject area called Plant Health.
**Ramune Kuktaite new MAXIV coordinator**
From November Ramune Kuktaite is the vice-coordinator of the MAX IV-SLU platform and LTV faculty representative regarding MAX IV questions.
**Scandinavian perspectives of plant gene technology**
Dennis Eriksson from the recently started PlantLink focus group Plants in society has just published a review of plant gene technology in Scandinavia together with 7 co-authors from Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. In this review, they discuss the country-wise applications, policies and public perceptions as well as discuss the relevance of plant gene technology for strategies of national interest such as bioeconomy, food sovereignty, environmental goals and so on.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ppl.12661/full
https://www.slu.se/ew-nyheter/2017/11/vaxtbioteknik-ur-ett-skandinaviskt-perspektiv/
**ScanOats now going online!**
The Industrial Research Centre ScanOats, from which we reported in the PlantLink Newsletter for March 2017, has now set up an official website: www.scanoats.com. Do you want to know more about the long-term goals of ScanOats, or who the involved partners are? Are you interested in any specific work package? Are you a student and want to know if there are any future career prospects in oat research and product development? Or are you simply curious about oat and why everyone nowadays is talking about this good old cereal? Then this is the place on the web to visit. You may also sign up for the monthly Newsletter and follow ScanOats on Twitter @scanoats.
For more information, please contact ScanOats Research Coordinator Dennis Eriksson at dennis.eriksson@tbiokem.lth.se.
**NOVA PhD course, “Phenotyping Technologies in Plant-environment Interactions – Integrated Analysis of Omics Data”, 11-15 June**
NOVA PhD course, “Phenotyping Technologies in Plant-environment Interactions – Integrated Analysis of Omics Data” is given at SLU Alnarp, 11-15 June. First deadline 25 January! Register here!
**Summer school in Warsaw “Genomics for Plant Breeding and Biotechnology” 19-25 August 2018**
MSc students! Next year’s ELLS Summer course in Plant Molecular Breeding and Biotechnology will have the “Genomics for Plant Breeding and Biotechnology”. It will be given in Warsaw 19-25 August. Registration will open early next year. For more information please contact Hania Bolibok-Bragoszewska for more information.
**PhD course Plant Protection Biology, 20-31 August, 2018**
The objective of this bi-annual course is to give PhD students from different subject areas (e.g. ecology, entomology, nematology, plant breeding, molecular biology etc.) a deeper understanding of challenges and constraints in relation to modern plant protection in different systems. Read more in the course syllabus. More information and preliminary schedule is found here.
**Registration is now open for Plant Biology Europe in Copenhagen 18-21 June 2018**
18-21 June 2018, Plant Biology Europe arranged by FESBP and EPSO Copenhagen. The first program is now out. Submit your abstract and read more here!
**Increased focus on urban farming**
There is an increased focus on Ubran Farming in the region. Among other things University of Copenhagen is offering a master class for city developers and policy makers in January. Read more here
**Looking for an MSc project? Look here!**
PlantLink post plant-related MSc projects continuously on our homepage. Have a look here!
**#metoo**
The vice-chancellor of LU, Torbjörn von Schantz, has written in his blog about harassment and sexual harassment following the #metoo appeal. He writes that it has been discussed at the highest level at LU that this must be prioritized and that these problems need to be prevented in academia.
Read more here (in Swedish) rektorsbloggen
**PlantLink researcher in the spotlight Therese Bengtsson**
This month researcher in the spotlight is Therese Bengtsson. Read more about her here!
**Upcoming meetings and events**
18-21 June 2018, Plant Biology Europe arranged by FESBP and EPSO Copenhagen. The first program is now out. Submit your abstract and read more here!
Please also see Dept of Plant Breeding SLU Alnarp, the Biology Department at LU calendar and Copenhagen Plant Science Centre calendars for upcoming meetings.