MIE celebrates Plant Health, featuring Adam Anaia

Picture: © S. Bernhardt/iDiv.

Note for the media: Use of the pictures provided by iDiv is permitted for reports related to this media release only, and under the condition that credit is given to the picture originator.

MIE celebrates Plant Health, featuring Adam Anaia: “I am Redouan Adam Anaia from the Netherlands. During my bachelor in Molecular Life Sciences, I became intrigued by plant chemodiversity and its role for human and plant health. I decided to start a master in plant breeding and during my internship, I have studied constitutive defense mechanisms of Solanum dulcamara against gastropods.  During my thesis, I dived into the amazing world of volatiles organic compounds as indirect defense mechanisms of Capsicum annuum towards cell-content feeders. Together, these experiences have broadened my knowledge and interest in plant-herbivore interactions, chemical ecology and plant breeding.

Currently, I am working on S. dulcamara again, as part of the DFG-funded research unit “Ecology and Evolution of Intraspecific Chemodiversity of Plants”. I conduct my research at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) in the Molecular Interaction Ecology group of Nicole van Dam. Here, I take a multidisciplinary approach in order to unravel the molecular mechanisms and ecological consequences of steroidal glycoalkaloid (SGA) diversity in S. dulcamara. I will perform a comprehensive metabolomic analysis of different plant parts; synthesize artificial SGA variation and employ these in preference assays and perform a field trial in which monoculture plots will be compared with more chemically diverse plots. I am convinced that the knowledge that is generated in my research will aid the breeding of solanaceous crops to become more resilient against herbivores.”