Doctoral student Petra Krejčí from the Department of Analytical Chemistry of the UP Faculty of Science won second place for her published work in the competition of young authors in the field of spectroscopy, which was announced for the year 2022 by the Jan Marek Marci Spectroscopic Society. The award was presented at the Faculty of Chemistry and Technology in Pardubice.
“Winning second place surprised me a lot, I did not expect it at all against such competition. The competition, which is open to young scientists up to 35 years-old, was open to scientific work published in 2022. I submitted my study, which was published in the impact journal Talanta,” said Krejčí.
Together with her colleagues, she is trying to determine what is behind the phenomenon called seed dormancy, when a plant’s seed does not germinate even when ideal germination conditions are met. “We’re examining dormant and non-dormant pea seeds and finding out how they differ from each other. We want to find out what causes dormant seeds to remain intact and not germinate even when a sufficient amount of water is supplied. In essence, it can be said that dormant seeds are chemically richer than non-dormant seeds,” said Krejčí.
The results of the scientific work can be used in the future to increase the germination rate of seeds of agricultural crops. “In some poor, food-scarce countries, farmers have mainly dormant seeds that are difficult to germinate. If we can figure out what stimulates their germination, our findings could help increase food production,” she pointed out.
Krejčí had only 10 minutes to present her scientific work, entitled “Combination of electronically driven micromanipulation with laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry – The unique tool for analysis of seed coat layers and revealing the mystery of seed dormancy”. “Given the scope of the study, it was not easy. It was necessary to select the most important things and impress the jury as much as possible. Which I finally managed to do,” said the PhD student.