Professorship for Botany

The team is working in the field of applied biotechnological  research on horticultural crops including development, adaptation and application of in vitro-culture techniques, gene diagnostics and  gene transfer techniques  as well as genotyping to analyze biodiversity in autochthonous woody plants.

The current leading project deals with the molecular basis of the columnar growth habit in apple trees by using genomics, transcriptomics, genotyping by sequencing as a tool for genome wide association studies. Gene transfer techniques via Agrobacterium tumefaciens, biolistics, and CRISPR/CAS9 are used in order to characterize candidate genes. Molecular biological studies on the environmental influence on flower buds and on dormancy are part of the EU-project "Goodberry".