Heribert Hirt

• Research Director at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

Crop yield has been greatly enhanced during the last century. However, most elite cultivars are adapted to temperate climates and are not well suited to more stressful conditions. In the context of climate change, stress resistance is a major concern. To overcome these difficulties, scientists may help breeders by providing genetic markers associat...

We isolated the plant endophytic bacterium Cupriavidus gilardii strain JZ4 from the roots of the desert plant Tribulus terrestris , collected from the Jizan region, Saudi Arabia. We report here the draft genome sequence of JZ4, together with several enzymes related to plant growth-promoting activity, environmental adaption, and antifungal activity.

One of the most rapid defense reactions of plants to pathogen attack is the so-called oxidative burst, which constitutes the production of reactive oxygen species ([ROS][1]) at the site of an attempted invasion. In general, the oxidative burst is induced by the perception of typical microbial

The present study explored the eco-friendly approach of utilizing plant-growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) inoculation and foliar application of silicon (Si) to improve the physiology, growth, and yield of mung bean under saline conditions. We isolated 18 promising PGPR from natural saline soil in Saudi Arabia, and screened them for plant-growth...

As a son of an engineer who traveled widely during his career, Heribert Hirt began his life in the exotic country of Iran, before receiving his high-school education in Germany and then studying biochemistry at the University of Cape Town and then later at the University of Vienna, from where he received his PhD in 1987. He then worked as a postdoc...

Drought and salinity are major factors limiting agriculture in many regions in the world, and their importance is predicted to even increase in the near future in parallel with the ongoing global warming and climate changes. Soil and rhizosphere microbes are potential resources for counteracting such abiotic stresses in plants. The knowledge on the...

This is the first book to present a comprehensive and advanced discussion on the latest insights into plant stress biology. Starting with general aspects of biotic as well as abiotic stresses, this handbook and ready reference moves on to focus on topics of stress hormones, technical approaches such as proteomics, transcriptomics and genomics, and...

Reversible modification of proteins by phosphorylation is crucial in regulating signal transduction in plants and other organisms. Research on protein phosphorylation has greatly benefitted from recent developments in mass spectrometry (MS)-based technology. In combination with this technology, different, highly specific phosphopeptide purification...

Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathways are modules involved in the transduction of extracellular signals to intracellular targets in all eukaryotes. Distinct MAPK pathways are regulated by different extracellular stimuli and are implicated in a wide variety of biological processes. In plants there is evidence for MAPKs playing a role in t...