During the International Conference of our German Society for Plant Sciences (DBG), the Botanik-Tagung, in Bochum, Germany, several early-career researchers received awards for their outstanding scientific achievements. Plant geneticist Dr Michelle Rönspies (Karlsruhe Institute for Technology, KIT) was awarded the Eduard Strasburger Prize for her paper published in Science. The PhD thesis of evolutionary biologist Dr Jaccoline Zegers (University of Göttingen) was honoured with the Wilhelm Pfeffer Prize; and the PhD thesis of macroalgae researcher Dr Sarina Niedzwiedz (University of Bremen) was awarded with DBG’s Horst Wiehe Prize. Each of the three researchers presented their findings in a plenary lecture in Bochum. Another Horst Wiehe Prize was given to plant physiologist Dr Paul Grünhofer (University of Bonn). Unfortunately, he could not attend our biannual conference since he is currently conducting research overseas. What exactly the scientific excellence of the award-winning papers and theses is, was published in a press release prior to the conference: Genome restructured, evolution of land plants, arctic kelp forests and trees’ surfaces. Also invited to our international conference were the three recipients of last year’s Best Paper Award of the DBG: Dr. Sara Leite Dias (Leibniz-Institute for plant Genetics and crop research in Gatersleben, IPK), Dr. Ling Chuang (during the study at Leibniz University Hannover and now at Max-Planck-Institute for chemical ecology, Jena) as well as to Shenyu Liu, also at Leibniz University Hannover, for their paper published in Science on the discovery of a key enzyme with great application potential to which they had contributed in equal parts.