16/04/2021 Kay Moisan has won the 2020 Hugo de Vries Award, for her PhD thesis on odours released by soil fungi and their effects on plants.

16/10/2020 Plant roots not only release odours themselves, but also appear to react to odours released by beneficial and harmful fungi in the soil. In her PhD research at NIOO, Kay Moisan found that this 'sense of smell' has a positive effect on the eventual health of the plant.

Restoring nature is not for the impatient: it takes a lot of time before the right plant species establish themselves. But experiments show there's a way to speed up the process, from decades to just a few years. A new website from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) tells you everything you need to know. Meanwhile, one of the researchers working on this pioneering approach defended his PhD thesis this week.