Chinese Academy of Sciences honours Jörg Kudla

International honour for Prof. Jörg Kudla: The plant biologist of the University of Münster has been awarded as outstanding scientist by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the largest research institution in the world. The title "Distinguished Scientist" is awarded by the Academy to leading international scientists from a wide variety of disciplines as part of its "CAS President's International Fellowship Program". Once a year, a committee selects about 30 prize winners from more than 200 nominees nominated by the individual academy institutes. They come from all over the world and each receive prize money of around 6,000 euros, which they can use for their research activities in China. Jörg Kudla received the award in particular for his research into the interaction of calcium and other signalling substances in crops and their role in plant stress tolerance. Stress factors can be heat and drought, for example. In addition, the Academy honoured another of his research topics, called De Novo Domestication, which facilitates the fast transformation of suitable wild plants species into novel crops with beneficial traits using molecular biological methods.