Microbes for Stress-Resilient Roots: To Striga Resistance and Beyond

Speaker: Dr Dorota Kawa, Universiteit Utrecht, Faculty of Science, Netherlands

Talk:  Microbes for Stress-Resilient Roots: To Striga Resistance and Beyond

Time: 13.03.2026

Venue: Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology, Abrahama 58, hall 042B

Dorota’s main research interest is how roots function in complex and dynamic environments. Over the years she has explored root development and how it responds to challenges from environmental factors such as salinity, nutrient deficiencies, parasitic plants and how it interacts with beneficial microbes. She has been studying these at multiple scales, from overall root system architecture to individual cell types and in several species: Arabidopsis, tomato, and sorghum. She obtained her BSc and MSc degree from Warsaw University of Life Sciences in Warsaw. She received her PhD from the University of Amsterdam, where she studied root responses to salinity and phosphate starvation. During her postdoc at UC Davis, she studied the potential of microbes to reshape individual root cell types. In Bill and Melinda Gates-funded projects she defined mechanisms by which soil-born microbes induce resistance to the parasitic weed, Striga hermonthica, in sorghum roots. Dorota is now an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University, where her team studies how microbes induce stress-protective layers in roots.