News
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Plant stress increases: New research with bacteria offers hope 04 March 2024
Soil that is too wet, or too dry. Or with a lot or few nutrients. Due to climate change, the differences are becoming bigger, and plants must increasi...
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Research projects launched into biodiversity in food and horticulture production 19 December 2023
Two Leiden research projects that focus on increasing the biodiversity of Dutch production systems for food and ornamental horticulture have started t...
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What Darwin couldn’t see: Expedition to uncover invisible life in Galápagos 22 March 2023
An international research team is to search for invisible life in the Galápagos Islands. The diversity of bacteria and other microscopic organisms may...
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Wood formation further explored by NWO-XL grant 07 September 2022
Leiden researchers, Professor Remko Offringa and co-applicants Salma Balazadeh and Frederic Lens received an NWO-XL grant (2.5 million euros). Togethe...
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'I have always worked for a better world. Here at Biology we do the same' 06 July 2022
The new institute manager of the IBL studied biology for six months, but went in a completely different direction: development cooperation and the fin...
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Rob Verpoorte receives prestigious pharmocognosy award 02 May 2022
The American Society of Pharmacognosy (ASP) has given the Varro E. Tyler prize to Rob Verpoorte, for his outstanding lifetime contributions to the sci...
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Cities have a direct influence on evolution 18 March 2022
A global biological study has provided the most direct evidence to date that humans, and specifically cities, are the drivers of evolutionary change o...
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Is it possible to avoid dehydration? Gene promotes wood formation 16 March 2022
‘It was a discovery we did not expect,’ says Remko Offringa, professor of Plant developmental genetics. Today he publishes a new trait of a versatile ...
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Revolutionizing plant protection strategies: Ding lab receives 2.4M grant to investigate plant immunity 10 January 2022
Plant biologist Pingtao Ding, assistant professor at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), has received a 2.4 million European grant from the Europea...
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Leiden biologists get awarded 730k NWO grant 27 October 2021
Salma Balazadeh, Víctor Carrión, and Jos Raaijmakers, biologists at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), have successfully applied for an NWO grant ...
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Bacteria stunt with established plant-soil feedback theory 29 September 2021
‘What I find most alluring about soil life is that you can steer it,’ researcher Martijn Bezemer of the Institute Biology Leiden (IBL) reveals. ‘You c...
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Evolutionary change in protective plant odours 23 June 2021
Plants can’t run away from enemies. Still, it would like to keep life-threatening herbivores at a distance. This can be done with odours. Klaas Vrieli...
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Producing new plants without sowing 10 May 2021
Producing offspring of a crop without sowing and that is even bigger than the parent plant. According to Leiden researchers this can be achieved by ov...
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Miraculous mechanism allows plant cells to directionally distribute the growth hormone auxin 18 March 2021
Leiden and Austrian researchers have succeeded in further uncovering how a plant cell passes on the growth hormone auxin in a directional manner to th...
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New light on innate plant immunity 11 March 2021
Plants are able to resist a pathogen’s attack by a dual innate immune system. The relationship between the two pathways was not clear, but it turns ou...