Niloufar Ashrafi 
Sophia Gerasimova 
Lieselotte Rauh
As we entered 2026, many of our projects reached an important milestone—marking roughly one year since their start. This provided an excellent opportunity for our doctoral researchers (and PIs) to share first results, exchange ideas, and engage with the international scientific community. We are delighted to see such strong participation in international conferences across Germany.
In February, several Agri-Explore members joined the Maize Genetics Meeting in Bonn (February 26th – March 1st): Niloufar Ashrafi was accompanied by two of her PIs (Dr. Claudia Schaff and Janik Telleria Marloth) and presented the first results of project P02 – DIARESIST. Dr. Sophia Gerasimova from the Plant Transformation and Genome Editing Core Facility of the Biozentrum also presented the work she developped in collaboration with Brazilian colleagues from UniCamp and Empraba, who later joined us in Halle to give a talk at the Halle Plant Science Colloquium.
In March, our speaker, Prof. Edgar Peiter, joined the Molecular Biology of Plants Conference in Hennef (March 16th to 19th). There, the resuls from projects P03 – DeLiTeS, P08 – EURECA, P10 – TIGER and associated project WP1-5 were presented by Lieselotte Rauh, Dr. Franziska Daamen, Vanessa Brückner and Simon Ortmann, respectively. Last but not least, the 7th Central German Meeting on Bioinformatics (March 26th to 27th) in Halle, had Dr. Thomas Schmutzer in the organizing team. There, several PhD candidates contributed with a presentation or poster: Marvin Behnke (WP1-4 MAGIC-Pangenome), David Klemm (WP3-3) and Maren Maruschevski (P06 – TIC-TOC).
Looking ahead, Agri-Explore projects will continue to gain international visibility throughout 2026. Our members are expected to participate in conferences in Málaga, Scotland, and Japan, further expanding the reach of their research far beyond our local network and supporting the development of their academic careers and researcher profiles.
