Prof. Zhongtao Jia from China Agricultural University (CAU) on "Hormonal regulation of root nitrogen foraging responses in plants". Prof. Jia did his postdoc with Prof. Nicolaus von Wirén in Leibniz-Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK Gatersleben, Germany). He is mainly interested on molecular mechanisms underlying nitrogen signaling on root development. His research topics include the identification of molecular regulators and genetic allelic variants determining nutrient use efficiency in the aspect of root development and nutrient acquisition.

In collaboration with Fujian Agricultural University (China), we published a research article on Nature Communications and we found that specific soil microorganisms Flavobacteriaceae and Paenibacillaceae bacteria can promote the formation of the rhizoshealth by biosynthesis of indole-3-acetic acid (IAA, a common auxin).

Prof. Jinliang Yang from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA on "Harnessing the naturally occurring beneficial microbes for N-resilient crop development". Prof. Yang is working on plant breeding and genetics, quantitative genetics, functional genomics in maize/crops.

We are very excited to announce that Root Functional Biology Lab is welcoming new PhD student researcher Ms Xiaofang Huang, who is funded by DFG.