Congratulations to Dr. Thomas Alcock starting his DFG-funded independent Emmy Noether research group in September 2025 on Plant Micronutrient Physiology. Leading a project named MaizeNutriUp, Dr. Alcock aims to uncover mechanisms by which plants can increase the uptake of micronutrients from the soil and transfer them to edible tissues. In doing so, we can boost the nutritional quality of crop outputs, even under suboptimal climatic conditions. Dr. Alcock’s research is particularly focussed on how variation in the uptake selectivity of root cells affects iron, zinc and selenium accumulation in maize exposed to water limitation, using a combination of elemental quantification and spatial-distribution analysis, confocal microscopy, and transcriptomics.
