19.08.2025
On August 19, 2025, Mohamed Ramadan Abdelfadil successfully defended his dissertation at Humboldt University in Berlin.
Since 2021, Mr. Abdelfadil has been working at ZALF and IGZ in Großbeeren on his dissertation entitled “Microbiome Preservation towards Rehabilitation of Microbiome-altered Environments,” developing a novel approach to creating artificial microbial communities — known as SynComs — that can reduce salt stress in crops. This can be used especially in future cultivation systems affected by climate-induced soil salinization. In addition to developing this process, Mr. Abdelfadil was able to prove its effectiveness in an experiment on tomato varieties. The salt-stressed plants grew significantly better when SynCom was added. He was also able to show that salt-stressed plants contain bacteria similar to those found in the root systems of salt-loving plants – known as halophytes, such as Salicornia sp.
We congratulate Mr. Abdelfadil on this outstanding scientific achievement in the interdisciplinary field of plant microbiome research and plant cultivation.
