The mission of the Institute of Agricultural Sciences (IAS) is to promote the creation and dissemination of knowledge about agricultural ecosystems and their complex interactions with the broader environment and human society. The IAS addresses current and emerging challenges to ensure the long-term sustainability of agricultural production and food systems to meet human needs.
Organisms exposed to consistent interactions across generations often coevolve to optimize their coexistence. This occurs between plants and pollinators or hosts and parasites. However, it is not known if plants coexisting over multiple generations in a community evolve to avoid competition and boost individual fitness. A study conducted by Anja Schmutz and Christian Schöb at the Agricultural Ecology group at ETH Zurich tackles this question.
Plants with multiple sets of chromosomes have advantages over their relatives with a double set. But why they often start out infertile was only partially understood. Biologists at ETH Zurich have now discovered a new reason for the initial difficulties.
Michaela Jung, a postdoc in a joint project of the Fruit Breeding Group at Agroscope and the Molecular Plant Breeding Group at ETH Zurich, has been awarded the Professor Albert Soenen Prize for her doctoral thesis. She developed genomic approaches that make apple breeding more efficient. The award ceremony will take place on 12 June 2024 in Belgium.
