It is almost unbelievable, but we have been living with the pandemic for over a year now. Another semester of teaching online has just ended, and I think we have overcome many barriers and made great improvements in this platform. Although the vaccines are already making an impact and, on our campus, the situation is pretty good, I ask that you all continue to keep the rules so we can maintain our problematic but still valuable routine.
Recently we have been experiencing problems in the continuity and quality of the power supply. There are a number of reasons for this related to the electric company and also to our campus’s infrastructure. I know that power supply disruptions severely hamper research, as well as teaching. I advise each one of you to include an appropriate UPS device in any important system. In case the UPS device breaks down, please bring it to the institute's administrative assistants so that it can be sent for inspection. Please turn off any electrical appliance before leaving for the weekend and even remove the plug from the socket. Especially during the rainy season, there may be power surges that are very harmful to electrical appliances. We recently conducted a successful pilot test of temperature control in the growth rooms and refrigerators inside the institute building. In case of power failure and temperature changes, the system sends alerts to email. If you are interested in connecting your infrastructure to the system, please contact the institute's secretary.
As you will see below in the newsletter, the institute's researchers are very active and have been successful in obtaining research grants. Recently, the institute's researchers have submitted a large number of grant proposals, and I hope that a significant portion of the applications will be accepted. I believe that our excellence begins with submissions to competitive funds that enable basic research. At the same time, it is clear that the institute's researchers also collaborate with commercial companies in studies with an applicative nature. This is certainly a great way to influence food production relatively quickly and effectively. Obtaining grants is very important in fulfilling our institute’s mission: developing agrotechnologies and biotechnologies for increasing arid zone food production while protecting the environment.
My name is Isaac Yagle, and I am a PhD student in Dr. Ilya Gelfand’s group of Environmental Biogeochemistry. I come from Lawra, a small community located in the savanna grassland of the northwestern region of Ghana, on the border with Burkina Faso.
I received my B.Sc. degree in Ghana from the University of Development Studies, and I came to Israel in October 2018 for my master’s degree in environmental biogeochemistry in the field of Desert Studies under the supervision of Dr. Ilya Gelfand and Dr. Michal Segoli. During my master’s study, my advisors introduced me to the entirely new and fascinating world of nitrogen (N) cycling in dryland ecosystems, as well as a new methodology to study it. In our lab, we measure in-field emissions of soil N oxides (N2O and NO) using state-of-the-art laser-based technology. We also estimate soil N transformations using standard laboratory-based techniques. During my master’s research, we have explored the effects of the summer-flourishing Salsola plant on the soil N cycle and soil N oxide emissions, and we found that patches of Salsola plants in the Negev Desert enhance soil N oxide emissions and microbial N transformations in soils.
During my master's study, I was blessed to receive the interdisciplinary scholarship funded by the Kreitman School of Advanced Graduate Studies, the 2018-2019 Excellence Award for Master’s Studies (cum laude), and the 2019-2020 French Associates Institute for Agriculture Biotechnology of Drylands Scholarship for Excellence.
These scholarships have motivated me to work even harder everyday towards contributing something new to science. Currently, I am a PhD candidate with Dr. Ilya Gelfand, studying the N cycle in soils under invasive Prosopis species on the shore of the Dead Sea. Also, I am a recipient of the High-tech, Bio-tech and Chemo-tech Scholarship funded by the Kreitman School of Advanced Graduate Studies.
Consortia with the Participation of the Institute's Researchers
EU project INDIA-H2O
Project Title: BIo-mimetic and phyto-technologies designed for low-cost purification and recycling of water
Principal Investigator: Prof. Moshe Sagi, FAAB
The overall aim of India-H2O is to develop, design, and demonstrate high-recovery, low-cost water treatment systems for saline groundwater and for domestic and industrial wastewaters. The focus for development will be in India’s arid state of Gujarat, where surface water resources are very scarce. Cost-effective technologies and systems are proposed with the aim of lowering energy costs through dramatic improvements in energy efficiency, new bio-based approaches to water recycling, and the use of renewable energy. Rejected waste streams will be minimised or reduced to zero, thus protecting the environment.
As part of this consortium, Prof. Moshe Sagi (Gizi) and his lab members, Dr. Dominic Standing and Mr. Tesfaye Asmare, are developing methods for growing Salicornia and Sarcocornia as a valuable crop in Gujarat, using high salinity wastewater rejected from the desalination process.
Congratulations to Dr. Beery Yaakov on joining the university's technical staff as a teaching and research laboratory engineer.
Beery received his undergraduate degree in Life Sciences at Ben-Gurion University, and went on to conduct research as a graduate student in Prof. Khalil Kashkush’s lab on the impact of transposable elements on the genomic evolution in wheat.
In 2015, he continued as a postdoctoral scholar in Prof. Simon Barak's lab at the Sede Boqer Campus, conducting research into epigenetic regulation under abiotic stresses in Arabidopsis.
In 2018, Beery became an assistant researcher in the same institute, managing the labs of Dr. Vered Tzin and Prof. Simon Barak, becoming a specialist in bioinformatics, working on expression in plants, under biotic and abiotic stress.
Upcoming Seminars
3/3 ,Itay Cohen postdoctoral scholar at Prof. Shimon Rachmilevitch lab
Title: Crops under climate change
10/3 Chao Song, a Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Prof. Aaron Fait
Title: Tomato tolerance to salinity as affected by rootstock origin.
17/3 Nir Sade, TAU
Title:Root plasma membrane aquaporins regulate root hydraulics , shoot gas exchange and plant growth.
Projects, Prizes and Fellowships
Israel-Italy MOST Project
Prof. Inna Khozin-Goldberg
A new collaborative project has been funded between Inna Khozin-Goldberg (Microalgal Biotechnology Laboratory, FAAB) and Prof. Aleberto Bertucco (University of Padova) in the framework of Israeli-Italian Scientific & Technological Cooperation in the field of Green Chemistry and Development of Novel Environment Friendly Materials. The project will explore the ability of some cyanobacteria to fix atmospheric nitrogen into a nitrogen/carbon reserve polymer (cyanophycin). This polymer is of high biotechnological interest that can be used for the production of industrially relevant bio-polymers and amino acids. Biotechnological (genetic modification) and process-engineering tools will be used to enhance cyanophycin content.
The project is funded at 398,000 NIS for two years.
A new collaboration agreement between Microalgal Biotechnology Lab BGU and an Israeli-German start up
A collaboration agreement has been signed between the Microalgal Biotechnology Lab and an Israeli-German start-up Algalife (https://www.alga-life.com/). The team will explore the potential of microalgae as sustainable, natural, and healthy pigments and fibers in the textile industry.
Multidisciplinary research between the Faculty of Engineering Sciences and BIDR
Project: Developing deep learning algorithms for climate and environmental issues
Prof. Arnon Karnieli (PI BIDR), Prof. Mark Last (PI Engineering)
This project will focus on modeling precipitation in an eastern Mediterranean. Model inputs will include geopotential height, wind, vorticity, cloud water content, temperature, and specific humidity, each at several atmospheric pressure levels, acquired from the Copernicus ERA5 Reanalysis program. A time-based train-test split of the input data will be used for evaluating model accuracy.
Collaboration with Carmel Mizrachi Wineries
In Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and other important wines, high levels of methoxypyrazines, MPs, can "degrade" the wine from a very high series (180 NIS per bottle) to a medium series (70 NIS per bottle). Environment-plant interaction is the main factor in this loss in quality. In an integrated omics approach, encompassing broad qualitative and quantitative changes in metabolites, gene expression, and climate, the Fait lab, in collaboration with Carmel Mizrachi Wineries, aims to identify key regulators of MP biosynthesis.
ICA
project: Microalgal by-product as a thrapeutant & feed supplement for aquaculture
Prof. Inna Khozin-Goldberg and Prof. Dina Zilberg
This study will continue to explore the utilizing residue from microalgal production to promote fish health in aquaculture. The microalgae, grown as a source of bioactive compounds for human consumption are only partially utilized and large amounts of protein, fatty acids, etc. remain. Utilizing the residue is both sustainable and economically-viable.
The budget received will be used to build a large-scale experimental system for trials with food fish.
Budget: 87,000 NIS
Scholarship from Haifa LTD (formerly Haifa Chimicals)
Thanks to the scholarship from the Haifa group, Elided Lumor, Dr. Ilya Gelfand's student, is studying the effect of incremental fertilization levels on soil trace gas emissions. Elided measures soil fluxes of water, methane, and nitrogen oxides simultaneously in a carrot field in Kibbutz Urin using state-of-the-art laser-based instruments. Elided's preliminary results indicate that a) the current application level of fertilizers is at least two times that required by the crop, and b) currently, we are overestimating N trace gas emissions from carrot crops.
Kelem Gashu joined the Fait laboratory in March 2017 following an MSc from the Faculty of Agriculture (HUJI) in Israel and receiving the Molcho Research Award (Feb 2017) for achievements in studies.
During his MSc, he published a scientific paper in Agronomy about the fertilization of the super-crop Tef. At the FAAB, his PhD, under the supervision of Prof. Fait and Prof. Agam, focuses on grapevine varietal biodiversity.
In a first article (Gashu et al., 2020; published in FIPS), Kelem describes the phenological variability of 30 different wine grapevine varieties grown at two sites in the Negev plateau and the effects of consistent temperature shifts on berry development. His work has attracted significant attention from the scientific community for its novelty and from the industry challenged by the prospective increase in temperature in wine-growing regions due to climate change.
During his PhD, Kelem has mastered complex techniques such as metabolite profiling, mass spectrometry data analysis, network analysis, and multivariate statistics. Soon Kelem will submit another study to Plant Cell Environment on the GXE modulation of carotenoid metabolism and oxidative processes in the berries of 10 commercial white wine grapevine varieties from the collection. A third study is being prepared in collaboration with Michal Shamir from the Volcani Institute on polyphenol regulation in 20 red wine grapevine varieties. Kelem also co-authored a Nature Biotechnology paper on a mass spectrometry-based automated analysis of a metabolomics dataset.
Kelem presented is his research in the DDD 2020 Conference, watch here
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