Bioscience

Bioscience: designing plants with higher yields and lower inputs  
 

Specific and rapid development of plants that help feeding the growing world population: That is the focus of the Business Unit Bioscience. Designing adapted plants is a necessity to ensure a durable future. The growth of the world population is demanding higher production levels, whereas resources are becoming more and more scarce. The demands for food, feed, natural fibres, energy and chemicals are certain to increase in the decades ahead, whereas resources that are essential for plant growth, such as good agricultural soil, water and nutrients, are becoming scarce.

Redesigning plants makes it possible to achieve higher yields with a lower use of resources. The development of new plants also makes it possible to achieve a higher economic value of produced biomass.

Searching for genetic variation
It is quite feasible to design plants that are thriving under new conditions by utilising the genetic variation of plants. So far this variation has hardly been explored, even for crops that have been cultivated for ages. We are mapping this genetic potential with our knowledge of genomics, metabolism, and physiology of plants. This knowledge enables us to design new plants more rapidly and specifically.

Two main lines of research
Our research to enable the design of new plants is divided into two main areas:

• acquiring insight into the organisation of plant genomes
• developing knowledge about the metabolism of the cell
• increasing insight into the physiology of flowers, fruits and seeds
• improving our understanding of the response of the plant to a changing environment

• designing better plants
• designing better industrial processes
  

Highly advanced facilities
Bioscience is very well equipped to generate deep insights into the complex genetic and metabolic networks of plants. We are operating highly advanced up-to-date facilities for DNA sequencing, proteomics, metabolomics, microscopy, and functional assays.

Furthermore, we host a Bioinformatics group for analysing extensive datasets. To maximize the added value of our research efforts we link them to technical and biological fields of expertise of others e.g., statistical genetics, plant physiology and organic chemistry.

Plant-based raw materials Plants supplying building blocks for the chemical industry  Effective and environment-friendly production of fine chemicals

Sustainable production and climate change   Making crops resistent to insects

Health Making plants with constituents that promote human health  What is tasty? Metabolomics provides the answer Plants for better medicine

Systems biology Prediction of flowering initiation based on genes

• Wageningen Genomics Facility   
• Plant Protein Expression Centre