Who we are
Our research is focussed on the fertilisation process in plants and how plants are able to adapt fertilisation to climate change, especially to drought. As biophysicists we are particularly interested in transport processes that allow a pollen tube to grow through the style tissue and to find the ovule. The well-balanced uptake of ions and water together with a sophisticated synthesis of new cell walls at the tip enables the pollen tube to react to environmental changes thus guaranteeing successful fertilisation and in turn, the production of food and nutrients.
Why/How are we going Green
Daily lab work and especially student courses usually produce a large amount of plastic waste, which is pretty unsatisfactory. A few years ago we seized the opportunity to buy a large amount of glass ware from a lab closure. We decided to reduce the throw-away consumables step-by-step by glass ware: pipettes, tubes, beakers, Petri dishes etc. By now we could halve our plastic waste. In addition, we are repairing old lab equipment or use parts of it to build new lab devices. This helps to recycling electronic parts and also saves quite some money!
