Evolution in Fast-Forward

How Thale Cress Adapts – or Goes Extinct

31-Mar-2026 - In an unprecedented field experiment, an international research team led by Goethe University Frankfurt, the University of California, Berkeley, and CNRS Montpellier investigated the evolutionary adaptation of thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) to a wide range of climates, from the Alps to the ...

CRISPR primes goldenberry for fruit bowl fame

16-Dec-2025 - Since the dawn of agriculture around 10,000 years ago, our ancestors have saved seeds from the tastiest, largest, and most resilient crops to plant in the following season. Today, most fruits and vegetables we buy are the result of hundreds to thousands of years of selective breeding. Now, Cold ...

New deep-learning tool can tell if your salmon is wild or farmed

28-Nov-2025 - A new paper in Biology Methods and Protocols, published by Oxford University Press, finds that we can now distinguish wild from farmed salmon using deep learning, potentially greatly improving strategies for environmental protection. Norway is home to the largest remaining wild populations of ...

Prospects for climate-resilient oats

Oat’s genetic diversity decoded

03-Nov-2025 - Oat is an important crop with many health benefits and diverse applications. Researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Helmholtz Munich, and the Leibniz-Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) have decoded the pan-genome of 33 oat lines—mapping their full ...

Humify – superfood for the soil

Fighting climate change with green chemistry: The start-up Humify has developed a technology that can reactivate soil as a carbon sink

05-Aug-2025 - Hot and humid temperatures, no light, no air and then that intense odour: when the high-pressure cooker is fired up in the start-up Humify's laboratory, it is hard to imagine that under such conditions the resulting product – a kind of black liquid sludge – could help to influence climate change ...

How "stressed" potatoes become climate-ready

Stress reactions of the potato due to climate change investigated to adapt future breeds

31-Oct-2024 - Heat, drought and flooding - nature is under stress, and so is the potato. As a staple food, there is a particular interest in making potatoes climate-ready. An international team led by the University of Vienna has now investigated how this can be achieved in the four-year EU project ADAPT. The ...

Evaluating the link between chemicals and declining insect populations

Using a library of 1,000+ agrochemicals, scientists saw significant changes in behaviour and long-term survival of different insect populations

29-Oct-2024 - Few people are fans of stink bugs, mosquitoes, or boll weevils, but insects play a key role in the circle of life that makes up the planet’s environment. In fact, world-renowned biologist E. O. Wilson famously declared that if insects vanished, our environment would collapse. Scientists have ...

Plastic Particles and Climate Change as Drivers for Antimicrobial Resistance

EU-funded research project deals with plastic pollution and the spread of antimicrobial resistance in aquatic systems

29-May-2024 - A research project based at Heidelberg University and Heidelberg University Hospital targets plastic particles and climate change as driving factors for the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the environment. The participating researchers will investigate socio-ecological interactions ...

Ocean acidification in coloured stripes

Making environmental changes visible

15-Sep-2023 - Our oceans are acidifying rapidly. Climate researchers from ETH Zurich are now illustrating these chemical changes with colour-​coded stripes. Global observations of ocean acidification over the last four decades serve as the basis. Most people consider climate change to consist only of the ...

Successfully reducing animal testing: The 3Rs principle in fish research

Investigation of cell cultures provides insights into climate change

23-Jun-2023 - According to animal experimentation statistics, fish are the second most commonly used group of animals in research after mice. They play an important role in aquaculture and also serve as model animals in various research areas. "Applying the 3Rs principle means reducing, refining and replacing ...