Tiziana Guerra is one of the five winners of our “Art Meets Science” ideas competition. She won in the Responsible Innovation category.
Tiziana Guerra is developing an early warning system at the Free University of Berlin that enables plants to alert us to infections—visibly.
Fungal infections are among the greatest threats to plant cultivation—often they are discovered too late to prevent crop losses. Especially in sensitive crops such as medicinal cannabis, they can cause enormous economic and qualitative damage.
This is exactly where LUMICAN comes in: an innovative early warning system developed by Tiziana Guerra and her research group as part of the “New Products for the Bioeconomy” ideas competition. The idea: using gene scissors and fluorescent reporter systems, so-called indicator plants are modified in such a way that they react particularly early to the occurrence of the widespread pathogen Botrytis cinerea, also known as gray mold, and glow visibly when infected. This allows infected plants in the greenhouse to be quickly identified before the fungus spreads further.
LUMICAN aims to provide a cost-effective, scalable, and sustainable solution that will make it easier for small and medium-sized farms in particular to access precise plant protection. This is made possible by combining molecular biology expertise, CRISPR-Cas technology, and a practical focus on transfer. We recognized Tiziana for this approach in our “Art Meets Science” ideas competition in the field of innovation and transfer.
In this interview, she talks about why science needs to get out of the lab, why the conditions for innovation in Berlin are great, and why a glowing strawberry plant is not just a pretty picture, but could be a real game changer for plant cultivation.