Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU)

The Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU) is one of the leading centres in Europe connecting environmental research with human health. In this perspective agricultural management is one of the key issues, as it directly affects humans by the quality and amount of crops. It could be shown that major diseases like diabetes are closely linked to nutrition. Therefore it is one of the aims of HMGU to develop strategies for a sustainable land use mainly taking into account global change scenarios (including land use conflicts as well as climate change). For this purpose the platform Scheyern is run which is managed by the Institute of Soil Ecology.

An understanding of the processes in soil which are linked to plant performance requires an improved mechanistic understanding. This includes in-depth information about microbial communities which are the catalysts for all major turnover processes and their dynamic in time and space. This is the major challenge of the research unit for Environmental Genomics headed by Michael Schloter.

Scientists involved

• Prof. Dr. Michael Schloter
• Dr. Karin Pritsch (Research platform Scheyern)