Hermann-Neuhaus Prize for Max Planck researcher Ulrich Lutz
Excellent research work on a rapid test for the diagnosis of herbicide-resistant weeds
The Max Planck Society honors postdoctoral researcher Ulrich Lutz at the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen with the Hermann-Neuhaus prize for developing a diagnostic method for detecting herbicide-resistant weeds in agriculture fast and cost-efficiently. For many years, the agricultural industry is challenged with an increasing pressure of delivering high crop yields under conditions of sustainable farming. At the same time, the number of herbicide-resistant weeds is increasing. The test developed by Ulrich Lutz at the Department of Molecular Biology, directed by Detlef Weigel, will enable farmers a more efficient and sustainable agricultural management to prevent a large-scale use of herbicides.
Herbicide resistance in weeds is already limiting or rendering sustainable agriculture impossible on the many agronomical lands. For example, in Europe, agricultural weeds are already more common than in North America. This is in particular caused by more intense farming and strained agricultural land, being more limited in size. Worldwide, more than 260 different weeds are known of being resistant against herbicides in agriculture, resulting in a yield loss of many million tons per year.
To counteract this trend, early diagnosis is needed to be able to limit the continuous increase of resistant agricultural weeds. In this regard, Ulrich Lutz developed a new approach which he refined in cooperation with farmers and large chemical companies. With their support, he could take recourse to a broad number of weed populations to verify different methods of herbicide resistance detection. For further analysis, he made use of latest DNA sequencing technologies and bioinformatic analyses. Based on his insights, he also developed a small mobile laboratory for fast point-of-care diagnostics.
“Today, farmers already use a various number of genetic methods to check resistance of agricultural weeds. However, all of them suffer from long processing times at high costs which limits their added value in agribusiness. Useful measures of weed control are thus hard to take,” Ulrich Lutz explains the situation. The results usually are a high yield-loss and an unnecessary environmental burden due to the application of herbicides, the scientist says.
His insights in fields of herbicide resistance, molecular biology, bioinformatics and sequencing technologies made him create the sparking idea during his time as postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Molecular Biology, led by Detlef Weigel at the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen. A prototype of the mobile laboratory he could already test and complete in close collaboration with farmers and first industry partners, which made him found a startup company.
“Similar to an antimicrobial resistance in humans, the increasing resistivity of agricultural weeds became a key challenge in farming, in particular in sustainable husbandry. The insights made by Ulrich Lutz which foundations he already laid during his doctoral studies, fitted perfectly into one of my recently started research activities. Here, we want to understand the development of herbicide resistance in agricultural weeds from a genetic viewpoint. Ulrich Lutz realized the impact and value of our studies for the agribusiness,” Detlef Weigel explains.
With the foundation of his startup company, Ulrich Lutz was able to steadily attract new customers from industry and science. Thanks to a number of accomplished business deals and new evaluable data from customer projects, a quick development of his product has been made possible. With the award money of the Hermann Neuhaus Prize, he would also like to try to communicate the knowledge of his invention in developing and emerging countries via workshops. Researchers in these regions could thus support farmers in dealing with resistant weeds and offer them practical added value.