Naivy Nava successfully defended her PhD thesis

Today, Naivy Nava successfully defended her doctoral thesis, supported by her committee members, including Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and two nematode specialists, Prof. Johannes Hallmann from the Julius Kühn Institut in Münster and Braunschweig and Prof. Eva Liebau from the Institute for Zoophysiology of our university. Naivy had joined us with a doctoral fellowship which she had won from her native Mexico. Her interest was in using chitosan to protect crop plants from disease. While our group knows a lot about chitosans, we had no experience with nematodes. This situation meant that Naivy had to first set up the biological system, then find out which chitosan is best suited and how it should best be applied to the plants for optimum performance. Once these basics were established – not at all an easy task! – she started investigating the mode of action of the chitosan treatment. Depending on the chitosan used, she found direct effects on the nematodes as well as indirect effects via stimulation of the plant’s immune system, and even different beneficial effects via the rhizosphere microbiome! As Naivy will stay with us as a post-doctoral researcher for a little longer, we will now see how to translate these findings into excellent publications and, equally important, into an efficient and environment-friendly strategy to protect crop plants from often devastating nematodes.