Back to list

Completed doctorates

Two IGZ doctoral students successfully defend their dissertations

19.03.2024
Teilen auf
Maria Fitzner (left) and Vanessa Harbart (right) recently successfully defended the dissertations they worked on at the IGZ. Photos: Private; sevens [+] maltry.
Maria Fitzner (left) and Vanessa Harbart (right) recently successfully defended the dissertations they worked on at the IGZ. Photos: Private; sevens [+] maltry.

In February, the two IGZ doctoral students Maria Fitzner and Vanessa Harbart successfully completed their doctorates at the University of Potsdam. Both completed their doctorates in the Programme Area "Plant Quality and Food Security" and were supervised by Prof. Dr Susanne Baldermann.

Dr Maria Fitzner has been working on the cultivation of selected salt tolerant plants, known as halophytes, in saline indoor farming as part of the BMBF-funded project "food4future". Here, she investigated the adaptation of cultivation conditions in order to optimise the plant metabolite profiles for human nutrition. The aim of the work was to investigate halophytes as potential alternative vegetables for future food production in urban areas and their nutritional quality. To this end, she first established suitable cultivation methods and recorded the composition of the halophytes. In addition, she investigated the influence of cultivation conditions on the nutritional and physiological properties. Finally, she analysed the underlying plant physiological mechanisms that contribute to the changes in the metabolite profiles and was able to show how these can be used specifically to modulate them.

Important results of this challenging work have been published in four peer-reviewed scientific articles. The dissertation was supervised and reviewed by Prof. Dr Susanne Baldermann (first supervisor, IGZ/University of Bayreuth), Prof. Dr Monika Schreiner (co-supervisor, IGZ) and Prof. Dr Annamaria Ranieri (reviewer, University of Pisa, Italy).

In her doctoral thesis in the BLE-funded "PermAFog" project, Dr Vanessa Harbart investigated the nutritional quality of lettuce in protected cultivation. Her main focus was on the influence of anti-fogging additives in greenhouse covers. These are used to prevent the films from fogging up at high humidity levels. In this work, a method for detecting antifogging additives outside the polymer matrix was established for the first time and investigations into their influence on lettuce quality were carried out. She was able to show that anti-fogging additives have an influence on valuable metabolites such as carotenoids and chlorophylls. The results of the work and the joint project provide important information for consumer protection and the environment, as new and longer-lasting films have been developed.

Three peer-reviewed scientific and additional articles were published as part of the doctoral thesis. Dr Harbart was also involved in two invention disclosures. The dissertation was supervised and reviewed by Prof. Dr Susanne Baldermann (first supervisor) and Prof. Dr Tanja Schwerdtle (second supervisor, University of Potsdam), Prof. Dr Harshadrai Rawel (reviewer, University of Potsdam) and Prof. Dr Volker Böhm (reviewer, Friedrich Schiller University Jena).

We congratulate Dr Maria Fitzner and Dr Vanessa Harbart on completing their doctorates and wish them all the best for their future careers!

Relevant Publications

Dr Maria Fitzner (centre left) with first supervisor Prof. Dr S. Baldermann (centre right, University of Bayreuth/IGZ), the examination committee from left to right (in the front row): Prof. Dr T. Grune (DIfE), Prof. Dr H. Rawel (University of Potsdam), Prof. Dr Annamaria Ranieri (University of Pisa), Prof. Dr Nicole van Dam and Prof. Dr M. Schreiner (IGZ) and the guests of the disputation.
Dr Vanessa Harbart (centre left) with her first supervisor Prof. Dr S. Baldermann (centre right, University of Bayreuth/IGZ), flanked from left to right by mentor Dr G. Jerz (Technische Universität Braunschweig), the members of the examination committee Prof. Dr H. Rawel and Prof. Dr A. Mangerich, Prof. Dr P. Winterhalter (Universität Potsdam) and Prof. Dr P. Winterhalter (Technische Universität Braunschweig)
Back to list