Who We Are and What We Do 

Our research team “Plant Devel­op­ment” as part of the Plant Evo­lu­tion and Bio­di­ver­si­ty depart­ment has been advanc­ing a tech­no­log­i­cal tool called somat­ic embryo­ge­n­e­sis for var­i­ous conifer species for about 40 years. Now we are in the sec­ond and third gen­er­a­tion of young researchers pur­su­ing answers to old and new research ques­tions and sup­port­ing the trans­fer of eco­nom­i­cal­ly fea­si­ble aspects into Small and Medi­um-sized Enterprises.

A lot of our research has been fund­ed by fed­er­al min­istries such as the Ger­man min­istry of agri­cul­ture and the Ger­man min­istry of edu­ca­tion. Fur­ther­more, we were and are asso­ci­at­ed in Euro­pean and inter­na­tion­al net­works (COST action: Copy­Tree, IUFRO Work­ing Par­ty 2.09.02 (Somat­ic embryo­ge­n­e­sis and oth­er veg­e­ta­tive prop­a­ga­tion technologies).

A num­ber of conifer species have been inten­sive­ly stud­ied on diverse lev­els (tis­sue cul­ture as well as mor­pho­log­i­cal, phys­i­o­log­i­cal and mol­e­c­u­lar sud­ies) in var­i­ous projects includ­ing Euro­pean larch (Lar­ix decid­ua), hybrid larch (L. × eurolepis), Dou­glas fir (Pseudot­suga men­ziesii), mar­itime pine (Pinus pinaster) and var­i­ous fir species and hybrids: Abies alba, A. nord­man­ni­ana, A. born­muel­le­ri­ana, A. pro­cera, A. lasio­carpa, A. alba × A. nord­man­ni­ana, A. con­col­or × A. gran­dis. A num­ber of geno­types of most of these species are in cry­op­reser­va­tion — more than 600 geno­types of Nord­mann fir, solely. 

For L. decid­ua and L. × eurolepis, the sys­tem of somat­ic embryo­ge­n­e­sis has been high­ly advanced and is about to be trans­ferred into prac­tice, in tight coop­er­a­tion with plant nurs­eries. Recent­ly, the new brand “TITAN LÄRCHE” was released by our project part­ner Baum­schulen Ober­dor­la GmbH. Find out more about our cur­rent projects here.

Meet the Team

Somatic Planters

Andrea Rupps

Andrea Rupps

Dr. rer. nat. — Senior Researcher at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Research Gate

“I am fas­ci­nat­ed by the remark­able phe­nom­e­non of totipo­ten­cy in plant cells — their abil­i­ty to regen­er­ate an entire plant from a sin­gle cell. My pri­ma­ry inter­est lies in unrav­el­ing the mol­e­c­u­lar mech­a­nisms that ini­ti­ate and reg­u­late somat­ic embryo­ge­n­e­sis, the process through which somat­ic cells devel­op into ful­ly formed embryos. Beyond fun­da­men­tal insights, I am pas­sion­ate about opti­miz­ing the entire somat­ic embryo­ge­n­e­sis work­flow — from ini­ti­a­tion to effi­cient embryo pro­duc­tion — with the goal of devel­op­ing prac­ti­cal solu­tions to com­ple­ment seed sup­ply and find a way to sup­port our forests and foresters .”

Juliane Raschke

Master of Science — Researcher at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Research Gate

“My field of inter­est is clon­al diver­si­ty: How and why dif­fer geno­types in terms of their devel­op­men­tal behav­iour? Dur­ing my stud­ies, I’d like to find out whether genet­ic or epi­ge­net­ic mark­ers can be iden­ti­fied, pre­dict­ing spe­cif­ic devel­op­men­tal poten­tial. In par­al­lel, I am address­ing dif­fer­ent aspects with prac­ti­cal impor­tance, in par­tic­u­lar, which cul­ture steps influ­ence or main­tain the embryo­genic poten­tial and how the process chain can effec­tive­ly be trans­ferred to nurseries.”

Juliane Raschke