Vaccination for plants - 23/01/2023

Dialogue instead of a chemical maze – new strategy for sustainable crop protection

Climate change creates stress. This provides an opportunity for pests to exploit plant weaknesses and reproduce. For the infested plant, this can be catastrophic and often fatal. But instead of continuing to protect harvest yields with toxic substances as before, the transnational DialogProTec project is now taking a completely new approach: researchers want to intervene in the communication between plants and pests to keep them healthy.

Valorization of biological materials - 12/01/2023

ValBio-Urban brings bioeconomy research to users

Reducing carbon dioxide emissions and the capture and utilization of CO2 are important steps towards achieving a climate-neutral and sustainable economy. Accordingly, as part of the ValBio-Urban research project, an interdisciplinary team from the University of Stuttgart is developing bioeconomic approaches to solutions that will be implemented with companies from Baden-Württemberg.

A polyester plastic of great mechanical stability, which is also easily recyclable and even compostable: Stefan Mecking, chemist at the University of Konstanz, and his research group present a new material.

Start-up 'Innovation Matters' - 19/12/2022

Saffron cultivation in Germany - sustainable with support from robots

Saffron is one of the most expensive spices in the world, because picking it involves a complex manual process. This treasure therefore comes to us mostly from countries such as Iran with poor working conditions and low wages. A start-up company called Innovation Matters from Baden-Württemberg is now developing a robot-assisted, automated process that will make saffron cultivation attractive in Germany as well as ecological and fair.

The launch of the global Nature Positive Universities initiative was announced at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15), held in Montreal, Canada, in December 2022. The University of Konstanz is one of more than one hundred universities from all five continents joining the initiative. The common goal is to address the university's own impact on nature and to identify and implement effective measures to halt and reverse the loss of…