The Hans Hartwig Ruthenberg Graduate Award is usually given to promising young scientists working towards improving farming systems and alleviating hunger. This year Ulrike and Sarah were honored.

Ulrike Beukert

How will we meet the rising demand of rice in future owing to the growing population? For a long time, plant breeding has been the popular answer to this question. However in most cases, the yield remains stagnant. The high expense incurred by the current current approach is a huge challenge. Ulrike Beukert, Plant Breeding student from Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg has a new approach on rice breeding. Her reserach on “Genome-based identification of heterotic patterns in rice,” used only a small selection of hybrid to predict the entire parent-line. Biostatistic analysis of yield and gene marker data helped her increase the prediction acurracy and improve yield.

The competitive parent combination that resulted from her work will be a great resource for development of new seed. Ulrikes´s work has a significant impact on saving resources during plant breeding. “I hope this method can be replicated on other food crops,“ she said.

Sarah Luisa Senz

Sarah could not make it to the tropentag. Her research on “Adoption of Agro-Ecological Farming Practices in Burkina Faso” was presented on her behalf. She focussed on small holder farmer in Burkina Faso. Her innovation in combining quantitative and qualitative method to compare different cultivation techniques make her stand out. “It sounds simple, but the impact is enormous,“ said Dr. Michael Frei, a member of the Fiat Panis jury.