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New study shows how targeted potassium transport improves yield and drought tolerance in cassava As published in Nature Plants on 17 December 2025 DOI: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-025-02159-7   An international research team from the Cassava Source-Sink (CASS) consortium has ac...

Last weekend, Sophia and Uwe Sonnewald had the great pleasure of attending the International Symposium on Potato Tuber Development and Resistance in Wuhan, China. The symposium offered an impressive opportunity to witness the remarkable rise of potato science in China, especially at the Huazhong Ag...

The 3rd Carbon Allocation Workshop, held at INRAE in Versailles, France, brought together international experts to explore how plants allocate, transport, and store carbon — a fundamental process that underpins plant growth, productivity, and resilience. Carbon allocation in plants is a dynamic and...

Trees in boreal and temperate regions undergo annual cycle of growth and dormancy. In order to survive winter, growth in shoot apex terminates and shoot apical meristem and growth arrested leaf primordia are enclosed within an apical bud. Growth arrest in buds is maintained through the winter by est...

In a recent article published in The Plant Journal (https://doi.org/10.1111/tpj.70445), we have uncovered how potato plants respond to fluctuating phosphorus levels in the soil, revealing a complex and stage-specific strategy that allows different organs to cope with nutrient stress. Using transcri...

From 8 to 12 September 2025, IPK Gatersleben hosted an exciting week dedicated to research data management and integrative bioinformatics. Bioinformaticians, computer scientists, data managers, and researchers from across Germany and beyond came together to learn, exchange ideas, and explore how new...

Potato yields are threatened by rising global temperatures, as heat delays or even abolishes tuber formation. We studied over 500 potato offspring from a cross between a heat-tolerant and a heat-sensitive variety to uncover the genes behind heat resilience. We found that heat-tolerant offspring form...

An engaging presentation on “The Wonder of the Cassava Plant” took place at the Botanical Garden in Erlangen, led by Dr. Mercedes Thieme and Dr. Christian Lamm from the Chair of Biochemistry at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU). Cassava, also known as manioc or yuca, is a tr...

On the occasion of the 7th International Plant Vascular Biology Conference from July 7 to 11 in Osaka (PVB2025), Prof. Dr. Uwe Sonnewald was able to present the work of the Chair of Biochemistry on the biotechnological improvement of cassava plants to an expert audience in Osaka, Japan. He reported ...

At the international conference on the green and efficient production of potatoes and sweet potatoes, Prof. Dr. Uwe Sonnewald was able to present the work of the Chair of Biochemistry on the heat tolerance of potatoes to an audience of over 200 scientists. The aim of the conference was to deepen and...