2024_04: Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter Award for Paula Venzke

Since 2021, the association Friends of the Botanic Garden at the KIT, announces the Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter Award for Sustainability. It is dedicated for theses in the field of plant sciences that contribute to sustainability in agriculture, or nature and environmental conservation. This year it was Paula Venzke, who did her master thesis with us an with our partners at the IBMP in Strasbourg. Topic was climate change in viticulture. How can we cope the challenge of progressively hot summers by breeding novel KliWi varieties (for Klima-Widerstandsfähig, climate resilient)? How can we determine the climate resilience of current varieties on a scientific base? Paula Venzke conducted controlled heat-stress experiments at the JKIP Experimental Station and developed non-invasive techniques to monitor the physiological responses of grapevine. She could demonstrate that the popular variety Riesling has to buffer heat stress by opening its stomata, thus, losing a lot of water. In contrast, the wild grapevine Hördt 29 originating from the alluvial forests of the Old Rhine can tolerate higher leaf temperatures, such that it can economise the use of water. This work led to new insights and new methods to evaluate heat tolerance on a scientific base, also an important contribution for our Interreg Upper Rhine projekt Kliwiresse. Congratulations!