Degree- or Independent projects
Are you interested in doing your future thesis with us at Plant Protection Biology?
Find your project
Below you will find information about various projects that may be of interest to you. These can serve as the basis for both a future thesis or an independent project. Contact the person responsible for individual projects for more information.
Title: Pollination in agricultural settings – with international field work!
Supervisor:
Carolina Diller, Researcher, Department of Plant Protection Biology, Campus Alnarp, SLU
http://carolinadiller.weebly.com/
Brief description: Interested in working in pollination or plant reproduction and collecting your data outside of Sweden?
Apply for SLU’s Global International fieldwork scholarships (Deadline 30 October): International fieldwork scholarships for your thesis | slu.se and contact me.
We can design a project together in countries such as Thailand or South Africa, and maybe Argentina.*
Title: Enhancing pollination precision by honey bees to garden strawberry
Supervisors: Hanna Thosteman (hanna.thosteman@slu.se), Department of Plant Protection, SLU
Paul Egan, Department of Plant Protection, SLU
Brief description: Increasing pollination precision by honey bees to target crops is a major target for agricultural pollination research. Honey bees are generalist pollinators and may show low affinity for certain crops such as pear and strawberry. To mitigate this, farmers typically increase honey bee hive stocking densities, which can have adverse effects on the surrounding natural environment. Our goal is to find solutions where pollinations effectiveness is increased in relation to hive stocking density.
What you will be doing:
You will be working with western honey bees (Apis mellifera), garden strawberry (Fragaria x annanassa) and several strains of beneficial yeasts and yeast-like fungi in an experiment where we aim to increase the visitation rate to strawberry flowers by manipulating honey bee foraging behaviour.
This project entails:
Maintenance of live honey bee hives (field)
Maintenance of yeast cultivations (laboratory)
Field experiments in Alnarp
Time frame:
The experimental period runs from early summer (May) and throughout the typical flowering period of strawberry (roughly end of June) in 2026. It’s beneficial to enter the project slightly before experiments start, but the exact arrangement is flexible and can be discussed. Suitable for bachelor and master projects. For master projects, we recommend >30 credit theses, but this is not a requirement.
Title: Genetic mapping and phenotypic characterization of Fragaria vesca (wild strawberry)
Supervisors:
Sebastián Arenas (sebastian.arenas@slu.se), ), Department of Plant Protection, Campus Alnarp, SLU
Carolina Diller, ), Department of Plant Protection, Campus Alnarp, SLU
Brief description: Understanding the genetic architecture of agronomic traits in Fragaria vesca is essential for advancing strawberry breeding programs. In this project, we will combine phenotyping of diverse plant material, statistics analysis with DNA extraction and preparation for downstream genetic analyses (e.g. GWAS and QTL mapping). By integrating phenotypic and genomic data, we aim to identify genetic variants underlying key adaptive and agronomic traits in this important model crop.
What you will be lerning:
- Bioinformatics
- Statistics (R-language)
- Laboratory work
What you will be doing:
- Phenotypic characterization of Fragaria vesca plants under controlled conditions.
- Recording morphological and agronomic traits (e.g. flowering time, growth, yield-related traits).
- Laboratory work, including leaf sampling, DNA extraction and quality control.
- Preparation of samples for sequencing and genotyping.
- Data entry and organization to support genetic mapping analyses.
Title: Reproductive health in light of climate change: heat tolerance in wild strawberry flowers
Supervisor:
Carolina Diller, Researcher, Department of Plant Protection Biology, Campus Alnarp, SLU
http://carolinadiller.weebly.com/
Brief description: Due to climate change, plants are increasingly exposed to heat waves when flowering. This is bad news for the temperature sensitive pollen grains, as high temperatures can lead to increased pollen sterility.
Interested in being part of the solution?
What you will be doing: In this project, we will be screening for pollen heat tolerant genotypes in the strawberry wild crop relative, Fragaria vesca (smultron).
This project entails:
- biotron work
- working with flower traits
- the plan to expose 30 wild strawberry genotypes representing North-, Central- and Southern Europe to heat stress and measure pollen viability, petal size and fruit production.
Title: Pollinator attraction in wild strawberry flowers
Supervisor:
Carolina Diller, Researcher, Department of Plant Protection Biology, Campus Alnarp, SLU
http://carolinadiller.weebly.com/
Brief description: We have a collection of 200 genotypes of wild strawberries that have been collected across Europe. We would like to screen for pollinator attractive traits and measure pollinator visitation.
What you will be doing: In this project we would like to screen for pollinator attractive traits and measure pollinator visitation.
This project entails:
- working outside
- measuring flower traits and observing pollinator visitation
