Individual publications from 2025
From grain to gain!
Understanding how crop varieties perform across different environments and management practices is essential for improving agricultural productivity and resilience. Multi-environmental trials (METs) provide valuable data for dissecting these complex genotype-environment-management (GxExM) interactions. The Intensive Food Plant Systems Group(Tsu-Wei Chen) generated a comprehensive MET dataset for winter wheat in Germany, spanning six years, six locations, and nine different management scenarios. This rich dataset, encompassing over half a million data points and 24 traits – including yield, agronomic characteristics, baking quality, and disease indices – offers a powerful resource for addressing key agronomic questions, informing breeding strategies, and developing decision support tools for sustainable agriculture. Find out more about their discoveries in their Scientific Data Article!
24 genes walk into a working memory study…
Working memory (WM) is a fundamental cognitive function, and while genetic studies have identified numerous associated variations, the role of gene expression in WM remains largely unexplored. The Molecular Psychology Group (Sebastian Markett) developed a novel approach to investigate the genetic basis of WM by integrating connectome, transcriptome, and genome data. Using a high-quality dataset of 481 Chinese adults, they identified WM-related brain regions, then determined differentially expressed genes within those regions using the Allen Human Brain Atlas. These findings could subsequently be validated in two independent, large-scale datasets. If you want to know more about this powerful method check out their Human Brain MappingArticle!
Mind the Gap!
Visual working memory is the cognitive system that allows us to temporarily hold and manipulate visual information in mind. Verbal storage is the component of working memory that holds and manipulates information in a phonological (sound-based) form, such as words or numbers. Typically the two elements are studied as separate cognitive functions. However, the act of naming visual stimuli may influence performance on visual working memory tasks, with some research suggesting benefits and other research indicating potential biases.The Distributed Cognition and Memory Group (Thomas Christophel) investigated the verbal labels people naturally associate with simple visual-spatial stimuli and how these labels relate to recall accuracy in a subsequent working memory task. Focusing on orientation and location stimuli, their research investigates the diversity of labels used and their impact on known biases in visual working memory, such as the cardinal direction bias, the phenomenon where people tend to remember orientations or locations closer to cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) more accurately than those in between. If you want to know more about the potential shared cognitive resources underlying both visual-spatial and verbal memory, check out their Journal of CognitionArticle!
Can we have our cake and eat it too?
Rapid urbanization often comes at the cost of diminished green spaces and weakened ecosystem services, creating a potential conflict between ecological health and socio-economic development. Finding a balance between these competing priorities is crucial for sustainable urban growth. The Landscape Ecology Group (Dagmar Haase) established a novel framework for quantifying this urban-ecological trade-off, using a return-on-investment perspective that links degraded ecological conditions with urban land use efficiency.Focusing on the rapidly expanding city of Zhengzhou, China, they assess four key ecological conditions – urban heat island effect, flood regulation, habitat quality, and carbon sequestration – alongside land use efficiency at a fine spatial scale. By analyzing these factors over two decades, they explored the dynamics of the urban-ecological trade-off to the key drivers influencing it and ultimately proposing adaptive management strategies to guide sustainable urban planning. Check out their Remote Sensing Article!
Your trash is my treasure...
Hemp waste is a byproduct of hemp cultivation, but presents a potential resource for insect-based bioconversion, offering a sustainable approach to waste management and protein production. However, the nutritional profile of hemp waste may not be optimal for insect growth, and the presence of bioactive compounds like cannabinoids can pose challenges. Solid-state fermentation (SSF), utilizing fungi, offers a promising strategy to enhance the nutritional value of such substrates. The Urban Plant Ecophysiology Group (Christian Ulrichs) investigated the impact of SSF with various fungal species on hemp waste, examining its effects on black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) growth and the fate of hemp cannabinoids, flavonoids, and terpenes. If you want to know more about how different fungal species can tailor the properties of hemp waste, improving its suitability as a BSFL feed and potentially modulating the levels of valuable or undesirable compounds, check out their Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology Article!