Human Practices | WageningenUR

The need for human practices, because we can achieve more together

Responsible innovation requires its societal impact to be taken into account from the very beginning of the process and to be assessed at every step of product development. To do this, inclusion of stakeholders is necessary. Therefore, while creating PseuPomona, we have involved farmers, researchers, and policymakers in the discussions about our ideas at every stage of our project and integrated their suggestions and needs into the design of the final product. All the literature research that we had done before could not have given us the hands-on experience and practical knowledge that we gained from different parties involved in the project. On this page, you can follow our integrated human practices journey in detail.

Go to the root of our Integrated Human Practices journey!

If you are unable to view the figure pop-ups, you can access the description of our journey here.

Consulting scientific experts for our safety-by-design ambitions and the design of in vivo plant experiments

We discussed our initial ideas on injecting a flowering delaying agent into the roots of the fruit tree with Dr. Richard Immink - a plant flowering expert - and Prof. Dr. Steven Lindow - a pioneer in combating frost damage with engineered bacteria.

Prof. Emer Dr. Steven Lindow

Communication about GMOs to the outside world is a delicate but very important issue

It can be difficult for microbes to inject proteins into root cells due to their thick protective layer, and thus the idea requires proper design and engineering.

Both type III and type IV secretion systems, which are used by bacteria to inject proteins and nucleic acids respectively, into other organisms, are a possible way to have a bacterium deliver antiflorigens to a root cell.

Prof. Dr. Ir. Richard Immink

The phosphatidyl ethanolamine-binding protein (PEBP) gene family, which is present in all eukaryote kingdoms and has three subfamilies identified in angiosperms. This gene family is involved in controlling the flowering mechanisms and thus should be the main target to search for flowering-delaying antiflorigens. Moreover, given that many of these proteins have an effect in parts of the plant other than those in which they are produced, it is likely that they can be transported over long distances within plants (for instance from roots to shoots) which is the core of our PseuPomona strategy.

The active sites of florigens (the proteins inducing flowering) are very conserved amongst plant species. This conservation indicates the possibility of cross-species effectivity. This conservation indicates the possibility for cross-species effectivity of the members of the PEBP gene family.

Arabidopsis thaliana could be used as a subject organism in the design of our in vivo plant experiments as this is the most used model plant on which a lot of flowering experiments have already been performed.

The potential use of mRNA antiflorigens was discarded as they decay too fast and therefore are not suitable for long-distance transport inside the plant, which is required for our proposed application method.

Antiflorigens do not require transport signals to travel within the plant.

We committed to using the type III secretion system to insert antiflorigens into root cells and chose Arabidopsis thaliana as the model organism for our plant experiments. Moreover, considering the controversies surrounding similar projects in the past, we decided to put emphasis on communicating our project to the public clearly.

Discussing the developed biosafety features with Dr. Cécile van der Vlugt-Bergmans and Dr. ir. Cynthia van Rijn, GMO risk assessors from the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM).

Dr. Cécile van der Vlugt-Bergmans and Dr. ir. Cynthia van Rijn approved of our safety-by-design approach, confirming that the biocontainment measures we introduced in our projects are a step in the right direction. Especially the efforts regarding the traceability of our bacteria were very much appreciated. They mentioned that for them, as risk assessors, this is a very important argument when considering the possibility of environmental release. Moreover, we learned that in order to proceed with further research on the biosafety of our solution, characterising the bacteria’s behaviour would be the number one priority.

We learned that, from a legal point of view, traceability of a GMO is a crucial feature. This information helped us to design our detection kit.

Discussing the application strategy and assessing the feasibility of our shaped project with farmer Johan Sonneveld

We learned that in terms of the yield of harvest, the year 2023 was very bad for cherry farmers in the Netherlands. This is because the most popular cherry tree species in this country, Cordia, is especially susceptible to frost damage. We confirmed that water solubility is a key aspect of our product to enable delivery through the irrigation system and that farmers will be very interested in it if restoring the flowering time is effective.

We confirmed that application of our product using an irrigation system is feasible. Therefore, we included it in our user manual.

Consulting several farmers through a questionnaire to find out how frost damage is perceived amongst fruit farmers worldwide and to get feedback on the project idea

With the help of Jeannet Mulder from NFO and farmer Jochem, we got in touch with many farmers to find out how the problem of frost damage and our possible solution is perceived by fruit growers all around the world. We distributed a questionnaire in the Netherlands, India, Italy, and Chile. Based on the results, we learned that some farmers are hesitant towards the idea of introducing genetically modified bacteria in their soil. Nevertheless, a lot of them were positive about the possibilities our project would give them in terms of frost damage prevention and flowering time control.
Watch the video we made for farmers to explain our project to them for feedback:

If the video is not loading, watch it here.

Mild frost damage happens every year, but once every 5 or 10 years there is significant frost damage that farmers are unable to avoid with current frost countermeasures.
A lot of farmers show interest in using PseuPomona to control flowering time, mostly to reduce frost damage, but, to our own surprise, also to spread the harvest time window and decrease the time pressure.
Almost all farmers would allow for testing PseuPomona on a part of their orchard to see its effects.
The name PseuPomona can be confused with the plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae. Therefore, to avoid confusion, we added an additional explanation to the video. Moreover, we learned that we have to consider this in future communication with farmers.

We verified that many farmers struggle with frost damage. Moreover, we confirmed the suggestion of farmer Herman, that farmers also have an interest in a different possible application of PseuPomona – extending the harvest time window to alleviate pressure on farmers.

Consulting experts on the scientific feasibility of our project

We consulted scientists on the feasibility of specific ideas and methods that we intended to use in our project.

Prof. Dr. Ir. Richard Immink

Helped us set up experiments with a model organism, Arabidopsis thaliana, which is easy to grow and can represent a realistic model for cherry and other fruit trees.

Confirmed that heterologous expression of florigens in microbial hosts is possible, therefore we could produce our proteins in bacteria and later test their effect on plants.

Dr. Wouter Kohlen

Advised us on the design and set-up of in vivo plant experiments so that we could get as much data out of the limited number of experiments that we could perform. For example, we had to screen for an effective dosage of antiflorigen right away as this is not known in literature.

Prof. Dr. Paolina Garbeva

Pointed out that the colonisation of the roots of adult trees with new bacteria can be difficult since they already have an established microbiome.

Confirmed that tree root exudates are not well studied and suggested testing several inducible promoters using different substances.

Helped us establish the optimal cell density in our product. To successfully insert the bacteria in the soil, she suggested that the density of 10^7-10^8 CFU/g should be used.

Dr. rer. agr. Klaus-Peter Götz

Showed us that there is already proof of phytohormones being produced in roots and transported to apical shoot meristem in flower buds via source-sink forces. This means that transporting our protein through the plant is feasible.

We designed in vivo experiments with Arabidopsis thaliana to test the effects of different antiflorigens. We found out that expressing antiflorigens in bacteria should be possible and transporting them from roots to buds is feasible. We identified potencial difficulties in root colonisation and induction mechanisms.

Finding out about frost damage trends, getting feedback on the use of our project from farmer Herman van Capel

We were told about the disadvantages of current frost damage prevention methods and found out that late spring frost events are becoming more frequent in the Netherlands every year. Moreover, he recommended that irrigation systems already present in orchards could be a way of distributing our product. He also suggested diversifying the harvest time across an orchard as a potential measure to limit the losses due to frost damage and reduce time pressure during harvest season.

We decided that irrigation systems in orchards are an easy way of applying PseuPomona and that we need to make our product water-soluble. We also started considering the spread of flowering time as a second application of our product.

Learning about frost damage prevention and cherry orchard cultivation from farmer Jochem

We learned that all current frost damage prevention methods have significant drawbacks, and their application time depends solely on the farmers’ intuition. Additionally, we learned a lot about the practices used to maintain an orchard. One of the main findings was that a natural cherry tree root system can be as wide and deep as the plant above ground. In orchards, however, this is often not the case due to cutting or obstructions by clay. Partly because of this, cherry trees are regularly irrigated which is very helpful input in our applied design.

We found out that frost damage prevention methods are stressful and labour intensive for farmers. We decided that our product should be easily applied and controllable to make it stand out from current solutions such as spraying trees with water or burning paraffin candles throughout the orchard.

Getting feedback on the final product, as well as the application and detection protocols from farmer Herman van Capel.

Farmer Herman was satisfied with the final design of our solution, once more confirming that the delivery using the irrigation system is a straightforward and user-friendly method. Moreover, he provided us with feedback on the user manual. One of the key insights was that we should clarify at what pace the irrigation water needs to be spread. Furthermore, he tested our detection kit manual and confirmed that the procedure was understandable and easy to perform. As the cherry on top, we created a video tutorial with which we can demonstrate the procedures to other farmers.

If the video is not loading, watch it here.

We received the final confirmation from farmer Herman that our application method is convenient, and the detection kit is well-suited for real on-site use.

The feedback we received from all the stakeholders throughout the project was extremely valuable and helped us shape the final product to be as safe, robust, and useful for the farmers as possible. The discussions we had allowed us to identify the key features of a successful product, such as user-friendliness, safety, low cost, effectiveness, and compatibility with the practices performed. Based on this, we were able to design a final product that does not require any additional tools than what farmers already have. We also incorporated the feedback from farmers by developing a product that can be delivered through their current irrigation system, can be easily detectable on-site, has several biosafety layers, and uses fewer resources than the frost prevention methods currently used. To find out more about our product and its use by farmers visit our Applied Design page.

Jochem van Dijke

Fruit farmer at Leccius de Ridder Fruitexploitatiemaatschappij B.V.

“If you take precautions that were not needed you lose a ton of money and maybe even risk the trees' health. But a wrong decision can also lead to a decimating loss of your harvest. So, you really need to make a delicate judgement if it is the right moment to take precautions.”

Main contribuitions:

Helped us to get familiar with general orchard cultivation practices.
Current frost damage counter measures are greatly dependent on the intuition of the farmer on when to apply it.
Current frost damage counter measures all have significant disadvantages.

Jochem van Dijke is a fruit farmer and manager with a special interest in cherry trees. He is well aware of the current state of fruit farming and what threatens the future of its cultivation. As a full-time farmer, he experiences first-hand the effects of environmental and legal factors on the capability to produce sufficient, high quality and affordable fruits by farmers. As a young farmer, he tries to explore every possibility to maintain and strengthen his future in the fruit cultivation business.
When visiting the farm he is employed at, it became evident that we as aspiring scientists have little to no knowledge on the real-life practices performed to cultivate cherry and other fruit trees. All the theory we had read up on could not have prepared us for the hands-on experience lessons we got from him. He gladly shared all his knowledge on how cherry trees are currently cultivated and what the shortcomings of modern fruit production are, such as how many trees could be grown per area, how they are irrigated, the efficiencies of the trees and what impacts them, and the costs associated with frost damage. He also informed us that current frost damage solutions greatly impact the well-being of the farmers due to the accompanying uncertainty and financial strains, confirming to us that there was room for improvement in the battle against frost damage. Thanks to his knowledge we made the first outline of what would become our application strategy.
Furthermore, together with Jeannet Mulder, Jochem helped us create our online survey to inventorisze and get an indication of the impact of frost damage and how it is perceived by farmers as well as their general attitude towards our proposed solution.

Herman Capel

Fruit farmer at Capel Fruit

“We currently see, more often than in the past, softer winters followed by more frost periods in the spring. So, the chances of frost damage are increasing.”

Main contribuitions:

Enlightened us about the general trends in frost damage.
Spreading the harvest across an orchard is not only interesting to spread the risk of frost damage but also to reduce time pressure during harvest season.
Current frost damage countermeasures all have significant disadvantages.

Herman Capel is a fruit farmer at his family business Capel Fruit where they have already cultivating fruit trees for four generations since 1950. So, it can be truly said that Herman has been spoon-fed fruit farming from a young age. Therefore, he and his company were a unique place for us to learn about fruit farming and understand the problem we are targeting in greater detail. As their company specializes in cherry farming, we got to know a great deal on the impact of frost damage and its trends throughout the years on this specific fruit tree.
Once we got talking about the topic of cherry farming and frost damage, we immediately noticed the vast amount of practical knowledge he mastered about his profession. He taught us a lot on the most popular and less popular frost damage countermeasures, but also on all the disadvantages each method had such as labour, financial and effort intensive practices. Basically, confirming a lot of what we first spoke off with farmer Jochem. Furthermore, he gave us an increased insight in the daily farming efforts so we could tailor our application approach to this. Notably, he voiced his interest in our product to use it to spread the harvest across his orchard, thereby spreading the risk of frost damage and even reducing the time pressure during the harvest season. His statement about spreading harvest times aligned with the statements mentioned in our online survey, as such it made us realize that our product could help reduce the burden on farmers even outside the scope of battling frost damage.

Herman Capel

Fruit farmer at Capel Fruit

“We currently see, more often than in the past, softer winters followed by more frost periods in the spring. So, the chances of frost damage are increasing.”

Main contribuitions:

Enlightened us about the general trends in frost damage.
Spreading the harvest across an orchard is not only interesting to spread the risk of frost damage but also to reduce time pressure during harvest season.
Current frost damage countermeasures all have significant disadvantages.

Herman Capel is a fruit farmer at his family business Capel Fruit where they have already cultivating fruit trees for four generations since 1950. So, it can be truly said that Herman has been spoon-fed fruit farming from a young age. Therefore, he and his company were a unique place for us to learn about fruit farming and understand the problem we are targeting in greater detail. As their company specializes in cherry farming, we got to know a great deal on the impact of frost damage and its trends throughout the years on this specific fruit tree.
Once we got talking about the topic of cherry farming and frost damage, we immediately noticed the vast amount of practical knowledge he mastered about his profession. He taught us a lot on the most popular and less popular frost damage countermeasures, but also on all the disadvantages each method had such as labour, financial and effort intensive practices. Basically, confirming a lot of what we first spoke off with farmer Jochem. Furthermore, he gave us an increased insight in the daily farming efforts so we could tailor our application approach to this. Notably, he voiced his interest in our product to use it to spread the harvest across his orchard, thereby spreading the risk of frost damage and even reducing the time pressure during the harvest season. His statement about spreading harvest times aligned with the statements mentioned in our online survey, as such it made us realize that our product could help reduce the burden on farmers even outside the scope of battling frost damage.

Dr. ir. Cécile van der Vlugt-Bergmans and Dr. Cynthia van Rijn

Risk assessors GMO at the GMO office of the RIVM (Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment)

“Being able to monitor your product is very important for a risk assessment process and market approval because in order to have a chance for approval, you will need to prove that the product has disappeared after a certain period of time.”

Main contribuitions:

Implementation of a tracing method is very important from a risk assessor's point of view.
Characterization of product behaviour is the number one priority when thinking about the next steps in research and commercialization.

Their expertise on the methods of risk assessment was very much appreciated, as these are mostly unknown legislative territories for us. A product approval process as required for the likes of PseuPomona hasn’t been seen in the Netherlands for more than 20 years. It became evident that the need for data and knowledge characterizing our product is the number one priority when taking the leap into field trials or even commercialization, as this data will tell you what the product will be doing out in the field and to the environment. For this purpose, they were very much in favour of a detection method that will be able to differentiate the product from the native soil bacteria population. A detection or traceability system, to gather data for the risk assessment, would have a stronger priority in a risk assessment than the biocontainment measures itself. This conclusion was at the very least eye-opening for us, as biocontainment measures are normally prioritized when designing new synthetic biology products, including within for example the iGEM competition itself. Furthermore, they expressed their view on applying our product through irrigation, rather than spraying, as something that is less risky. Therefore, using the irrigation system not only is the preferred choice of farmers but also is more interesting from a risk assessment point of view.

Johan Sonneveld

Fruit consultant at Fruitconsult B.V.

“This year 3-4 days of flowering delay would have saved 30% of the total harvest.”

Main contribuitions:

The year 2023 was very bad for cherry farmers in the Netherlands.
The most popular cherry tree species (Cordia) in the Netherlands is especially susceptible to frost damage.
Helped us with shaping and finalizing our application strategy.
Farmers will be very interested if the flowering delay is proven to be effective.

Johan Sonneveld is a fruit consultant specializing in stone fruit. He is regarded by Dutch fruit farmers as the go-to expert when it comes to cherry tree cultivation. As such, he gets questions from farmers all across the country seeking advice on their problems with growing fruit. Therefore, he is the perfect person to seek advice from on our project. Not only does he have a lot of knowledge on current cherry tree cultivation practices and its problems, but he also has a great overview of the problems and interests of cherry farmers across the Netherlands.
Consulting with Johan was extremely fruitful. He confirmed our problem statement by mentioning that the number of frost nights that he needed to keep awake to set-up counter measures has doubled since he was young. On top of that, he gave more detailed explanations on the disadvantages of current frost damage counter measures and why they are insufficient. For example, especially early in the flowering stage it is difficult to take precautions. Even though the flowers are still covered in their buds at this time, they couldn’t withstand the lower temperatures this year that they used to withstand in previous years. Sadly, only one night of frost can already result in a 30% loss of harvest. Furthermore, he pointed out that frost damage is only one of the two important environmental factors determining a successful harvest. The weather conditions after flowering are just as important. As it happens it is better weather later in the year, so our project could stimulate better harvest on two fronts by pushing the fruit growth to a little later in the year.
Additionally, we also discussed our proposed application method with him to see if farmers would be able to apply PseuPomona and if the proposed actions were not too labour intensive. To this, he noted that the application can be added in two ways, via fertilizer or via the irrigation system, if we wanted to incorporate our method in current cultivation practices. Especially the irrigation system was suitable for PseuPomona as this would allow occasional addition of substrates necessary for our kill-switches and doesn’t need heavy machinery. For the sampling he also demonstrated the current methods that farmers already use to measure moisture, nitrogen and other minerals in the soil, and. So, we could use these same practices for our own detection method as well according to him. Finally, he mentioned that some kind of digital tool to predict what our product does, according to environmental conditions like weather, to know when to stop the flowering delay would be very much appreciated by the farmer community.
Due to all his advice and considerations, we felt more comfortable with the final draft version of our application method for fruit farmers.

Jeannet Mulder

Training consultant and project leader on Education and Innovation for fruit cultivation at NFO (Dutch Fruit Growers Organization)

“It is interesting to map the impact frost damage has in the cherry industry”

Main contribuitions:

Helped us in the development and distribution of an online survey for farmers.

Jeannet Mulder is a training consultant and project leader at NFO which is the central representative organization for Dutch fruit growers. Here, she is greatly involved in teaching and distributing current and innovative knowledge on fruit cultivation in the Netherlands.
Together with her and farmer Jochem van Dijke we developed an online survey to get an indication of the impact of frost damage and how it is perceived by farmers as well, as their general attitude towards PseuPomona. Jeannet helped us tailor the questions so that it would suit farmers and they would be more encouraged to fill in the questionnaire. Furthermore, she helped us by distributing the survey among the members of NFO and posting it on their website to have a national reach. This greatly helped us in getting information and feedback from cherry farmers across the
Netherlands on the topics of cultivation, frost damage and our PseuPomona project.

Jochem van Dijke

Fruit farmer at Leccius de Ridder Fruitexploitatiemaatschappij B.V.

Main contribuitions:

Helped us to get familiar with general orchard cultivation practices.
Current frost damage counter measures are greatly dependent on the intuition of the farmer on when to apply it.
Current frost damage counter measures all have significant disadvantages.

Jochem van Dijke is a fruit farmer and manager with a special interest in cherry trees. He is well aware of the current state of fruit farming and what threatens the future of its cultivation. As a full-time farmer, he experiences first-hand the effects of environmental and legal factors on the capability to produce sufficient, high quality and affordable fruits by farmers. As a young farmer, he tries to explore every possibility to maintain and strengthen his future in the fruit cultivation business.
When visiting the farm he is employed at, it became evident that we as aspiring scientists have little to no knowledge on the real-life practices performed to cultivate cherry and other fruit trees. All the theory we had read up on could not have prepared us for the hands-on experience lessons we got from him. He gladly shared all his knowledge on how cherry trees are currently cultivated and what the shortcomings of modern fruit production are, such as how many trees could be grown per area, how they are irrigated, the efficiencies of the trees and what impacts them, and the costs associated with frost damage. He also informed us that current frost damage solutions greatly impact the well-being of the farmers due to the accompanying uncertainty and financial strains, confirming to us that there was room for improvement in the battle against frost damage. Thanks to his knowledge we made the first outline of what would become our application strategy.
Furthermore, together with Jeannet Mulder, Jochem helped us create our online survey to inventorisze and get an indication of the impact of frost damage and how it is perceived by farmers as well as their general attitude towards our proposed solution.

Dr. Wouter Kohlen

Assistant professor of Plant Developmental Biology at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Wageningen University & Research

Main contribuitions:

Advised us in the design and set-up of our in vivo plant experiments, to get as much data out of the limited number of experiments that we could perform.

Dr. Wouter Kohlen is an assistant professor of Plant Developmental Biology. His research focuses mostly on understanding the molecular switches that determine de novo meristem initiation. Knowledge on these traits is very helpful in creating more efficient agriculture practices, since crops would lose less energy in developing axillary buds and their outgrowth. Being able to control these mechanisms would mean a great improvement in agricultural output and resource efficiency.
Due to his extensive knowledge of in vivo plant research, he made considerable contributions to an efficient set-up of our own experiments. Due to a limited amount of time, space and financial means we could not perform endless trials. Therefore, we needed to get as much data out of the available experiments we could perform. He suggested to right away test multiple protein concentrations even though we had no data on effectiveness, as this would save time and money in the end. Additionally, he advised dropping some types of set-ups after pointing out the unfavourable cost/benefit ratio of them which was something unknown to us.

Dr. rer. agr. Klaus-Peter Götz

Scientist at the Humboldt University of Berlin at the Faculty of Life Sciences and the Albrecht Daniel Thaer-Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences

Main contribuitions:

Transport in the phloem of a tree can be sufficiently fast.
There is evidence of peptides produced in the roots that are transported to the shoot apical meristem.

As a scientist at the Humboldt University of Berlin where the research is focused on fundamental nutrition, development and resource problems in a modern world, Dr. rer. agr. Klaus-Peter Götz is one of the best plant physiology experts to consult for our project. He answered our questions about sap flows in real life fruit trees and the activity and ability of these transport mechanisms for peptide and protein movements inside a plant. For example, he confirmed to us that the use of phloem transport to transport proteins through a plant is possible, and there is already evidence of plant hormones (ABA) being produced in the roots and travelling upwards towards the top of trees. These findings indicated to us that we were on the right track in the beginning stage of our project and as such we could continue with the further development of our project.

Prof. dr. Paolina Garbeva

Senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW)

Main contribuitions:

The colonisation of roots of adult trees can be difficult since they already have an established microbiome.
Root exudates are not well studied in trees.
To insert the bacteria in the soil, density of 10^7-10^8 cfu/g should be used.

Prof. Paolina Garbeva's research is focused on studying the mechanisms of microbial communication and plant-microbe interactions. We reached out to Prof. Garbeva after hearing a lecture given by her at Science Café, an open event organized by one of the cafes in Wageningen. Being an expert on the complexity of interactions taking place in the rhizosphere, she pointed out that effective colonisation of the roots of adult trees may be difficult because they already have an established microbiome. She suggested that to increase the chances of successful application, the product should have minimal viable cell density of 10^7-10^8 cfu/g. We also discussed the role and characteristics of root exudates. Unfortunately, Prof. Garbeva confirmed our findings that the composition of root exudates of fruit trees is not well-studied, and performing such analysis is complex and time-consuming. Thus, she recommended us to base the experiments on the data available for model plants, as some of the compounds excreted by roots do not differ between plant species.

Herman Capel

Fruit farmer at Capel Fruit

“We currently see, more often than in the past, softer winters followed by more frost periods in the spring. So, the chances of frost damage are increasing.”

Main contribuitions:

Enlightened us about the general trends in frost damage.
Spreading the harvest across an orchard is not only interesting to spread the risk of frost damage but also to reduce time pressure during harvest season.
Current frost damage countermeasures all have significant disadvantages.

Herman Capel is a fruit farmer at his family business Capel Fruit where they have already cultivating fruit trees for four generations since 1950. So, it can be truly said that Herman has been spoon-fed fruit farming from a young age. Therefore, he and his company were a unique place for us to learn about fruit farming and understand the problem we are targeting in greater detail. As their company specializes in cherry farming, we got to know a great deal on the impact of frost damage and its trends throughout the years on this specific fruit tree.
Once we got talking about the topic of cherry farming and frost damage, we immediately noticed the vast amount of practical knowledge he mastered about his profession. He taught us a lot on the most popular and less popular frost damage countermeasures, but also on all the disadvantages each method had such as labour, financial and effort intensive practices. Basically, confirming a lot of what we first spoke off with farmer Jochem. Furthermore, he gave us an increased insight in the daily farming efforts so we could tailor our application approach to this. Notably, he voiced his interest in our product to use it to spread the harvest across his orchard, thereby spreading the risk of frost damage and even reducing the time pressure during the harvest season. His statement about spreading harvest times aligned with the statements mentioned in our online survey, as such it made us realize that our product could help reduce the burden on farmers even outside the scope of battling frost damage.

Prof. Dr. Ir. Richard Immink

Endowed professor of Plant Reproduction and senior researcher at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Wageningen University & Research

“This is a challenging and highly relevant project for plant sciences and plant breeding with an original, out-of-the-box approach. High risk and hopefully high gain!”

Main contribuitions:

Shed light on the complex world of plant flowering pathways.
Steered us in the direction of using the PEBP-gene family as our main target for anti-florigens.
Advised us in the design and set-up of our in vivo plant experiments, to use Arabidopsis thaliana as a test subject.

Prof. Dr. Ir. Richard Immink is an endowed professor of Plant Reproduction. As such, he has performed extensive research to help elucidate the molecular flowering pathways and their interaction with environmental cues. He does this to create a better understanding of these underlying mechanisms so that breeders and plant growers are able to control these biological processes and optimize yield in a sustainable manner in food, feed and ornament crops. Also, it provides breeders with the tools and ways to generate climate proof plant varieties, which is an important characteristic, taking into account the current climate change and global warming.
To this extent he helped us grasp the complexity of plant flowering. But not only that, he also steered us in the right direction when searching for effective flowering delaying proteins, as not all anti-florigen gene families lend themselves to be used for our application method. So, in the end he advised us to look into the PEBP-gene family to search for potential heterologously expressible anti-florigens. Furthermore, he made us consider the different plant options available to test these proteins in an in vivo setting and what each respective advantages and disadvantages were according to our limited time scale and space at hand.

Prof. Emer Dr. Steven Lindow

Professor of Plant Pathology at the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California, Berkeley

“You’re making plants behave more normally, more like they should, than they currently do.”

Main contribuitions:

Communication about GMOs to the outside world is delicate but very important.
Injection in the root cells is tricky and needs sufficient designing and engineering.

Prof. Emer Dr. Steven Lindow is professor emeritus of Plant Pathology. His research group studies aspects of epiphytic bacteria that live on healthy plants' surfaces, emphasizing bacteria active in ice nucleation, causing frost damage to plants, as well as plant pathogenic bacteria that inhabit plant surfaces before infection and to better understand adaptations in epiphytic bacteria that have evolved to exploit this unique habitat. Additionally, he was involved in the development of Frostban in the late 1980’s, which for obvious reasons can be linked to our project as well.
His experience with releasing a GMO in the field targeting frost damage drove us to contact him. He made clear to us that, especially these days, clear communication about the use of GMO’s to a broad audience is a delicate but crucial endeavour, as your project will fail or succeed based on the acceptance of the public in these times when transgenic microbes are under additional scrutiny. Since he also is an expert in plant-microbe interactions he advised us on our application method. We learned that injection into plant cells, especially root cells, is quite complicated. As such, he informed us as well as possible on the features of type III and IV secretion systems, so we could make a well-informed choice on which path to follow with our microbial chassis.

William Scott

Postdoctoral Researcher at the Laboratory of Systems and Synthetic Biology at Wageningen University & Research

“Conventional way to do microbial community modelling requires large amounts of OMICs data. The agent-based model you mentioned could be interesting to get new insights at microbial community modeling”

Main contribuitions:

Support us in selecting the sub-projects of our iGEM project.

After making the decision of the topic of our iGEM project, we had a list of sub-projects the whole project. While we thought a new topic - agent-based models for microbial community modelling, William helped us to analyse the pro and con of the conventional microbial community modeling methods and the agent-based modelling approaches. He thought that as we did not have OMICs data for the microbial communities of cherry trees' soil, we can try agent-based modeling, which is worth being tried to get new insights of microbial community modelling.