Plant Research Department annual report 2003

In 2003 the Plant Research Department (PRD) at Risø National Laboratory was involved in establishing the consortium Plant Biotech Denmark, which is unifying most of the Danish Plant Biotechnology activities. Within the consortium, PRD has the uniqueopportunity to be the only life science department located in an environment that is largely dominated by physicists.

PRD is challenged to optimally interface Plant Biology with the different fields of expertise that are established at Risø NationalLaboratory. These activities are mainly related to develop novel post-genomic tools to assign function to genes, which are widely applicable in the life sciences, such as non-invasive and non-destructive technologies to determine metabolite concentrationswith high spatial and temporal resolution.

The Plant Research Department applies these and state-of-the-art technologies to increase knowledge to develop crops with improved agronomic traits and to engineer high-value compound containing plants.