Bio4Energy Plant Science Researcher Made Gunnar Öquist Fellow, Awarded Research Funds
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- Written by Anna Strom
A plant science researcher in Bio4Energy has been granted SEK3.05 Bio4Energy researcher Edouard Pesquet was granted an award to continue studying the molecular make up of plants and the mentorship of the Umeå University professor Gunnar Öquist. Photo by courtesy of Umeå University.
million to continue refining scientific knowledge of the molecular structure of plants and trees, and notably on the way in which water and minerals are transported in their "vascular" system.
On 4 December, assistant professor This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., a research group leader at the Umeå Plant Science Centre (UPSC) at Umeå, Sweden, became the first-ever grantee of a so-called Gunnar Öquist Fellowship. This is a new type of award to encourage up-and-coming researchers to innovate by allowing them to test out "novel approaches", as Pesquet put it. Carl Kempe of the Kempe Foundations, a Swedish research funding body, handed over the award at a ceremony at Umeå.
"My research takes aim at the cells that conduct the hydromineral sap" in a tree or plant, Pesquet said. In particular, he has been studying the small vessels that are responsible for transporting water and minerals from a plant’s roots throughout the plant. He likens this system for hydromineral transport with the vascular system of humans or "any superior organism. It must function or we die".
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