Plant Sciences' contribution to the Bioactive Molecules research theme is to identify new plant bioactive molecules, and unravel their mechanisms of action in plant development or health, and the regulatory networks and (bio)synthetic pathways required for their production.

Plant Sciences' contribution to the Evolution & Biodiversity research theme is to understand what are the key drivers of plant biodiversity during evolution with a focus on plant life history and resilience traits and develop tools to restore and maintain plant biodiversity.

Plant Sciences' contribution to the Development & Disease research theme is to unravel the processes that allow plants to adapt to changing abiotic and biotic environmental conditions or stresses, with the aim to contribute to the sustainable production of food, flowers and bio-based products using…

Plant Sciences' contribution to the Host-Microbe Interactions research theme is to dissect how microorganisms and microbiomes interact with the plant host and the insects on those plants, and how these insights may be harnessed to improve plant growth and health, by steering microbiome composition and…

How is vegetative development regulated in plants and how does this affect a plant’s life history strategy?

Identification and characterization of components of DNA repair pathways and their role in Agrobacterium T-DNA integration and repair of CRISPR/Cas induced DSBs.

The plant hormone auxin regulates plant growth and development through polar cell-to-cell transport-generated maxima and minima. PIN FORMED (PIN) auxin efflux carriers determine the direction of this auxin flow through their asymmetric placement on the plasma membrane (PM).

As a new vision on food production, the feasibility study on LED light to grow crops with the biological- and chemical evaluation of final products.

Promotor: Prof.dr. P. Hooykaas, Co-promotor: Dr. R. Offringa

Do large deletions represent a risk during CRISP/CAS9-mediated genome editing in plants?

Plants produce an astonishing variety of secondary metabolites (SMs) which are thought to play vital roles in the fitness of plants through ecological interactions.

How can we make agricultural production systems more sustainable as the worldwide demand for healthy, safe food continues to grow? How can we develop healthy new food crops that have higher yields while requiring fewer harmful chemicals?

Multicellular giant algae Chara species have been widely used in physiological studies for decades.

Promotor: P.G.L. Klinkhamer, Co-Promotores: K. Vrieling, P.P.J. Mulder

The mission of the Plant Science research programme is to contribute to the sustainable production of high quality crops, flowers and high-value bio-based products. This is realised by generating fundamental knowledge of basic biological processes related to development of plants and their interaction…

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This programme video is presented in Dutch

Plant exudates appeared long time ago in the history line of life in the early Devonian. They are typical saps produced by specialized cells.

The mission of the Plant Sciences cluster is to contribute to the sustainable production of high-quality crops, flowers and high-value bio-based products, and to contribute to the maintenance and restoration of biodiversity in natural ecosystems. This is realised by generating fundamental knowledge…

How can we manipulate the biotic and abiotic environment to increase thrips resistance in tomato and chrysanthemum? More specifically we ask: How can plant secondary metabolites that are not soluble in water be delivered to plants in seed coating or root dipping treatment? Can bacteria be used to…

Which microorganisms live near and inside plant roots? How do they contribute to plant health? Can microorganisms be employed in plant protection?

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How is Pol θ responsible for T-DNA integration, and how do other DNA double-strand break repair pathways interact with Pol θ? How may we manipulate T-DNA integration to stimulate error-free integration at a predetermined genomic site?

What are key regulators of plant ageing that can reverse ageing in plants (rejuvenation), and how can we use this knowledge to improve crop plants?

How do plants lure microscopically small 'support teams' into their roots for protection against diseases? And what functions are activated in the microbes and the plants?

In our lives we often have little attention or appreciation for plants, let alone the ones we commonly call weeds. This inattention for plants has been described as plant blindness. The Stoepplantjes project aspires to decrease plant blindness by changing the image of weeds and using citizen science.…

Which traits did change due to the invasion process of plants and how do these traits contribute to the invasiveness of such species. What is the role of carbohydrate accumulation? What is the function of carbohydrate accumulation in plants? Is genetic variation depleted in invasive species under se…

Harvesting rice from the same field, without planting new rice plants? A discovery may bring this scenario closer. Leiden scientists have discovered a gene that allows annual plants to grow after flowering, instead of dying. Publication on 13 April in Nature Plants.

Are you thinking about studying Management van de Publieke Sector: Politiek, Beleid en Management? Learn more and watch thevideos. Please note that this programme is taught in Dutch.

The HARVEST project explores the dietary choices that our hominin ancestors and relatives made, by recovering information on what they consumed, and how factors like environmental variation, intrinsic biology, and development of food processing technologies could have influenced their decisions.

How and why latex bearing plants select specific chemical compounds for eco-chemical interactions with its biotic factors?

Utilization of plant-originated products as new antibiotics

What plants grow along ditches in the Leiden region? What does this say about vegetation quality? Could it be better? Naturalis and Leiden University's Center for Environmental Sciences are looking for your help to answer these questions.

This presentation is presented in Dutch

What are the genes and molecular mechanisms involved in bacteria-mediated plant drought tolerance?

Book project on how European policy is made and implemented, with a focus on how that process can be understood and lead to policy change.

Tracking early human behaviour through plant processing and -exploitation.

A three-volume standard work on galls in Europe. Author Johannes C. (Hans) Roskam is associate professor emeritus in Evolutionary Biology and currently guest at Leiden University.

Basketry, cordage and textiles made of plant fibers or bark are rarely preserved in the archaeological record. By means of experimental archaeology and microwear analysis, we obtain indirect evidence about this important craft.

The Plant BioDynamics Lab (PBDL) is a laboratory dedicated to experiments designed to develop and validate quantitative mathematical models of dynamical processes in biology. The principal objective of developing these models is to make quantitative predictions about these processes.

Linking botanical collections, peoples, and illustrations in seventeenth century Dutch Brazil

We examine how soil-derived legacy effects of plants structure natural ecosystems, determine aboveground plant insect interactions, and how we can use soil legacy effects to restore degraded ecosystems.

Early cave paintings of hunting scenes may give the impression our Stone Age ancestors lived mainly on chunks of meat, but plants were just as key to their survival. Plants rich in starch helped early humans to thrive even at the height of the last Ice Age, Leiden archaeologist Amanda Henry tells Horizon…

In this thesis, the role of plant-mediated soil legacy effects in shaping aboveground plant-insect interactions was investigated.

Biodiversity enables ecosystems to thrive through the synergy of functional differences among organisms. While human well-being strongly depends on biodiversity-driven ecosystem services, human actions are also at the root of current unprecedented biodiversity declines.

In this thesis, I focused on studying the above- and belowground interactions of J. vulgaris from a plant-soil feedback (hereafter, PSF) perspective. I investigated the temporal variation of negative PSF and examined the effects of root-associated bacteria on plant performance and aboveground herbiv…