26. Mar 2025 Actualia (engl.) · Conference Report

23rd Central German Plant Physiology Conference

Participants of the 23rd Central German Plant Physiology Conference in front of the venue, the Leucorea at Wittenberg. Photo: Ralf Bernd Klösgen

The annual meeting of the plant physiology groups at the Universities of Leipzig, Halle, Jena and Dresden took place this year already for the 23rd time. It is traditionally organized in regular rotation between the four universities and took place this year on 14 and 15 February at the Leucorea in Wittenberg, being the “ancestral home” of Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Since its founding the organisers try to meet two major objectives:

  1. to foster scientific exchange among the involved working groups at central German universities
  2. to provide a board for early career researchers (ECRs, late bachelor and master students until dissertation) to actively present their findings at a scientific meeting.

This also provides a place to discuss scientific findings in an open atmosphere to an auditorium not only from the own working group. To do this, the programme, comprising 20 scientific talks and discussions, was almost solely carried out by the participating ECRs. The conference was supported by the German Society for Plant Sciences (DBG).

Almost 60 scientists participated this year in the Central German Plant Physiology Conference ("Mitteldeutsche Pflanzenphysiologie-Tagung") to present and discuss current research going on in this field at the participating universities. The vast majority of participants, not only the attendees but also the presenters and chair persons, were ECRs, i.e., doctoral, master's and even bachelor's students at an advanced stage, about half of them international students. However, the overall high quality of the presentations and discussions and the perfect adherence of all speakers to the given time schedule could have suggested that the program would instead have featured quite experienced and established scientists in the field.

Range of organisms and topics

The presentations addressed a whole range of plant species (cyanobacteria and unicellular algae, monocots and dicots, model plants and crop plants) and research topics (e.g., regulation of gene expression, membrane transport of proteins and metabolites, plant hormones, biosynthetic pathways, organelle biogenesis, plant adaptation to environmental stresses, biotic interactions, ....), which were examined with a wide variety of methods and approaches. Despite or perhaps even because of this diversity, each presentation was intensively discussed, and it happened more than once that the discussion led to "wow effects", new ideas, and approaches. It would be unfair and inappropriate to single out individual presentations as particularly noteworthy, as the enthusiasm and enjoyment of all speakers in their own work was evident without exception. We would like to make just one exception: Prof. em. Christian Wilhelm, on whose initiative the whole conference series came into being more than 20 years ago, clearly demonstrated in his talk that retirement does not mean that the interest in actively shaping science disappears, quite the opposite.

A further and not to be underestimated component for the desired scientific exchange were, of course, the coffee breaks, which were deliberately scheduled to last 40 - 60 minutes each, somewhat longer than usual. Together with the traditional conference dinner and the shared breakfast, which was made possible by the joint accommodation of all conference participants in the Leucorea, this resulted in a relaxed atmosphere that was very much stimulating scientific exchange and discussions, quite similar to that of major EMBO conferences.

All in all, we as the organizers hope that all participants enjoyed the conference as much as we did and are already looking forward to the 24th edition of the conference, which will take place in Dresden next year.

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March 2025,
Bationa Bennewitz & Ralf Bernd Klösgen, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg

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