Our paper on the evolution (duplicated) gene expression divergence in spatially resolved plant transcriptomes is now out @theplantcell.bsky.social w/ @yvdp.bsky.social #PlantSci #Evolution academic.oup.com/plcell/advan...

Co-option of transcription factors drives evolution of quantitative disease resistance against a necrotrophic pathogen (S Einspanier, C Tominello-Ramirez, F Delplace, R Stam) doi.org/10.1093/plce... #PlantScience @sev1panier

#DPST25 at TU Braunschweig brings together 1,100 experts to discuss future challenges in #PlantProtection and #Phytomedicine – from pest spread and resistance to climate impacts. 🏅Congrats to Dr Müller and Dr Winter, honoured for their outstanding research. @leibniz-dsmz.bsky.social #DPG

Now with official press release. I'm very much looking forward to welcome @cbarragan.bsky.social in January www.uni-kiel.de/en/details/n...

👏 Congratulations and welcome to Kiel, Dr Christina Barragán! The Mexican molecular biologist has received funding from the renowned Emmy Noether Programme by the @dfg.de​ to research the evolution of agriculturally relevant fungal pathogens at Kiel University.

🔗 More info here: https://www.uni-kiel.de/en/details/news/167-barragan-noether

Our first Annual Meeting marked a key milestone for the project, bringing together our community for engaging talks and valuable discussions. It was followed by a two-day workshop for early career scientists focused on networking and professional development. www.plantscochallenge.de/news.html

Urs Niggli fordert eine grundlegende Revision d. direkten #Pflanzenschutz im ökologischen Landbau🌾🍄 Vielversprechende Diskussionen auf der #DPST25

Very happy to see this work finally online! Resistance against necrotrophic pathogens is not generally conserved. When comparing five wild tomato spp, we saw that one spp co-opted a different mechanism against Sclerotinia infection!

This looks very interesting. Congrats @rstam.bsky.social et al. Co-option of transcription factors drives evolution of quantitative disease resistance against a necrotrophic pathogen url: academic.oup.com/plcell/artic...

There are no words to describe how excited and honored I am to take on the role. Already had such amazing support from the plant pathology community in Switz and cannot wait to grow the team further and see how far we can get in tackling our fungal foes. Look out for jobs starting in May 2026!

Ich suche eine*n TA für meine Arbeitsgruppe! Gern weitersagen 🤗🌾 #plantscijob

Pleased to share our new article in Cell Host & Microbe, a collaboration with the group of Zhong Wei at NJAU Common mycorrhizal networks facilitate plant disease resistance by altering rhizosphere microbiome assembly Free share link: authors.elsevier.com/c/1lnTD6t8JE...

Heads up: ignore samtools dot org, similarly minimap2 dot com and likely others. It's owned by a known phishing site and while the binaries they offer look valid currently (but note they may be serving us different binaries to others), that could change. Ie: it's not us (Samtools team)! Be warned

Happy to share our pre-print!

Multi-omics of barley Fusarium Head Blight converge on pathogen-triggered biosynthesis of aromatic amino acid derived chemical defense compounds https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.08.674812v1

Wow - congrats to all plant scientists! @izzysaurlab.bsky.social @pfeilmeier.bsky.social @jiorgoskourelis.bsky.social @clemmar.bsky.social @vinayshukla.bsky.social @tinaschreier.bsky.social so great to see 🌱s being rewarded the ERC StG!

🪲🦠 Volgens keuringsdienst NAK trekt het #fytoplasma sterk op door toenemende vectorendruk. Doordat het warmer wordt, hebben glasvleugelcicaden een grotere overlevingskans. Het IRS trof in juni de eerste vondsten aan van een vergelijkbare ziekte.

first weather test: passed! 💨🌧️ all S. chilense accessions survived a super windy & rainy weekend: not a single loss! tough wild tomatoes. they’re even thriving #plantscience #StressTolerance #Solanaceae #SciComm

After some time (and a lot of rain), #Phytophthora finally reached the experiment. Some plants died within only a few days. But more importantly, about 1/3 of our accessions are still going strong! 💪🌿

🌱 Back to the wild! We’ve just started a field trial with Solanum chilense at the @uni-kiel.de Botanical Garden. Can’t wait to watch our wild tomatoes tackle the Northern German summer. 🍅 Stay tuned for our next field-trial updates! #SChilense #FieldTrial #PlantScience #Kiel

Is plant single cell/nuc. & spatial transcriptomics your passion? Do you want to understand plant adaptation using cutting edge molecular & bioinformatics tools? Then come and join us to work together with @ceplas.bsky.social & @wggc-de.bsky.social. #plantjobs www.fz-juelich.de/de/karriere/...

🧬 Preprint alert! Excited to share our latest work on the role of longitudinal gene expression dynamics in resistance to Sclerotinia sclerotiorum. Check it out here 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/n

🧬 Preprint alert! Excited to share our latest work on the role of longitudinal gene expression dynamics in resistance to Sclerotinia sclerotiorum. Check it out here 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/n

#2025ISMPMI has been great, so many connections made and re-established. I found this on the railway bridge.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Up next at #2025ISMPMI @kseniakrasileva.bsky.social discussing work on protein language model for receptor engineering.

Brilliant talk by Dr. Gitta Coaker (UC Davis) on engineering plant immunity via kinase-mediated recognition. Loved the insights on FLS2 tuning and tandem kinases like RWT4. Synthetic biology meets plant defense! 🌱 @mpmijournal.bsky.social @gittacoaker.bsky.social @kseniakrasileva.bsky.social

🌿 Curious about microbiomes, effectors, resistance genes, and temperature stress? Come meet our team at #2025ISMPMI We’ll be presenting posters all week on Zymoseptoria–plant interactions, wild relatives, and immune manipulation! 🧵 Thread with posters & schedule ⬇️

On Wednesday, I successfully defended my doctoral thesis @uni-kiel.de and followed the tradition by climbing Meteor to celebrate! I’m deeply grateful for the incredible support and mentoring from @rstam.bsky.social and for my amazing colleagues, family, and friends!

Unlocking gene regulatory networks for crop resilience and sustainable agriculture Our new review is now online @natbiotech.nature.com w/ Richalynn, Xin, Bob, Toshi, & Jorge A full-text view-only is accessible via rdcu.be/euscD www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Yesterday we celebrated the first two PhD defences from my lab in Kiel! Well done Dr @sev1panier.bsky.social and Dr Tominello-Ramirez! The defences were excellent and they finished it off with the tradition of climbing the statue of meteor! de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_...

Me: "What did you learn at journal club today?" Intern: "That one day I'm going to publish a paper, and a bunch of people are going to sit around a table and rip it apart."

Der Klimawandel stellt die Landwirtschaft vor Herausforderungen. In diesem Jahr unter anderem spürbar durch ein kleines Insekt - die Glasflügelzikade. Wie die sich an Veränderungen anpasst und damit zum Schreckgespenst der Kartoffelbetriebe wird, Reportage von Michael Watzke.

Really nice work from @jellespooren.bsky.social showing that disease-suppressive soils might sometimes be generated in the phyllosphere. Turning the concept of soilborne legacies upside down 🌱🦠 With @cornepieterse.bsky.social @svanwees.bsky.social and others @utrechtpmi.bsky.social

Die Schilf-Glasflügelzikade breitet sich aus und bedroht u.a. #Kartoffel- und #Zuckerrüben-Anbau. Sie überträgt Bakterien, die Pflanzenkrankheiten verursachen. Expert:innen analysierten die Ausbreitung und diskutierten mögliche Gegenmaßnahmen: www.sciencemediacenter.de/angebote/sch...

🌱 Back to the wild! We’ve just started a field trial with Solanum chilense at the @uni-kiel.de Botanical Garden. Can’t wait to watch our wild tomatoes tackle the Northern German summer. 🍅 Stay tuned for our next field-trial updates! #SChilense #FieldTrial #PlantScience #Kiel

Midst of the labs Genetics publish-athon from @ccaseys.bsky.social. Infecting a population on host genotypes spread across 8 dicots we could show that a generalist pathogen has both generalist and specialist genes url:https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/doi/10.1093/genetics/iyaf079/8158657

This week's #PlantScience lecture brought @rstam.bsky.social & @sev1panier.bsky.social here to Einbeck to talk about their #PlantGenomics work on wild tomatos. Very cool work on understanding R gene diversity and QDR in the wild & on a population level. #PlantImmunity I'll link some papers below. 👇

#Botryscleromoni day 2. Another great talk by Daohong Jiang, thinking outside the box. Non-infective sclerotinia strain colonised with a mycovirus as a control for... sclerotinia. May be as effective as fungicides.

📜 MIK2-clade receptor function in perception of a Fusarium-derived elicitor is conserved among different plant families 🧑‍🔬 Julian Maroschek, Ralph Hückelhoven, et al. 📔 @biorxiv-plants.bsky.social 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #️⃣ #PlantScience #PlantImmunity #FusariumOxysporum #Fusarium

New paper by Florent Delplace - Sylvain Raffaele lab, Toulouse. Cool work on network evolution underlying quantitative defence responses. It was a pleasure to host and support Florent for a few months to work on the evolutionary analyses of the paper. :) academic.oup.com/plcell/advan...

Phyto-World! 🌿 I am looking for a Peronospora variabilis isolate (downy mildew in quinoa). Please spread the word and help connect me with anyone who’s got a culture or experience. 🙏 Any leads appreciated! Thanks!🎉 #PlantPath #PeronosporaVariabilis #Quinoa #DownyMildew #Phytopathology #Oomycete

Phyto-World! 🌿 I am looking for a Peronospora variabilis isolate (downy mildew in quinoa). Please spread the word and help connect me with anyone who’s got a culture or experience. 🙏 Any leads appreciated! Thanks!🎉 #PlantPath #PeronosporaVariabilis #Quinoa #DownyMildew #Phytopathology #Oomycete

Very happy to see our paper online: "Population genomics and molecular epidemiology of wheat powdery mildew in Europe". Congrats to @jigisha1.bsky.social and all coauthors! doi.org/10.1371/jour...

I’m glad to share that our paper about Z. tritici within-field diversity and effector variation is out! We show that functionally characterised effectors have no private haplotypes between fields and that clonal isolates can show different effector haplotypes! Read more here: doi.org/10.1094/MPMI...

New Paper out! apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/epdf/10.... We wanted to know how much genetic variation exists for Zymoseptoria in a single wheat field.

Two more high-quality plant pangenomes: rice 🌾 and potato🥔 just out @nature.com ! www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The PlantsCoChallenge homepage is now online. Please come and visit us! www.plantscochallenge.de/

Milestone reached! I just submitted my PhD thesis at @uni-kiel.de Special thanks belongs to the whole AG @rstam.bsky.social for making this journey such a joy🍅🌿 Stay tuned for more exciting science on #tomato #resistance to be published! 🚀