These are the best stories of 2025
What were the best stories published by Wageningen University & Research in 2025? In this overview, we list them.
2025 was a remarkable year for Wageningen University & Research. Within just a few months, the MyWUR app for students, the intranet, intranet groups, newsletters and — as everyone could see — the website were all given a new look. These were major operations that many people across the organisation worked extremely hard on, and they had an impact on the way news was delivered.
However, this did not mean that there was any shortage of fine stories about Wageningen’s research and education, the impact made by staff at Wageningen University & Research, and the excellent work carried out on the green campus and at the most sustainable university.
Nitrogen, AI and Ukraine feature in the top five most-read in-depth stories, but the article that attracted the most attention was the story of Eugenie van Heijgen, who showed in her PhD thesis how decisive hunting landscapes are in shaping our view of nature
The most-read in-depth stories (5)
The most-read stories from KennisOnline and Wageningen World
Throughout the year, KennisOnline publishes multimedia stories about the research carried out by Wageningen University & Research, co-funded by the Dutch Ministry of LVVN. Wageningen World is the magazine of Wageningen University & Research and is published twice a year.
The most-read KennisOnline story focused on the enormous waste mountain created by coffee capsules. As only a small proportion of these capsules is recycled, their environmental impact is significant. Wageningen World told the story of microbiologist John van der Oost, who was instrumental in the discovery of the CRISPR-Cas gene-editing technique and who retired this year. The KennisOnline story about SeaHydrogen was also popular. In this project, researchers combine several processes into a single solution that produces drinking water, salt and energy from seawater.
The most-read news stories
The most-read news story of 2025 was about the impact of European trade on Dutch agricultural exports. Stories on precision fermentation and African cocoa production were also quite popular.
If we also include news stories published in previous years in the statistics, there is one undisputed winner: the article about the crane radar. Every year, thousands of bird enthusiasts find their way to this article to follow the crane migration. The update on the renewed crane radar is also among the most-read stories: Follow the crane migration even better with the renewed crane radar.
Follow the crane migration
Dr Koen de Koning developed an app in collaboration with Sensing Clues that works as a ‘rain radar for cranes’.
The most-read news stories (5)
The most-watched video
Over the past year, we started producing short science videos for social media. The shorts about measuring food and the virtual shopping street used to study the impact of the food environment performed well on LinkedIn and Instagram. On YouTube, the standout was the video about duckweed: its publication coincided with the European decision to approve duckweed for human consumption.
The best-known duckweed species, Lemna, were officially approved last year as a vegetable for human consumption in Europe. It is now up to the food industry to start using duckweed in products. In this video, Ingrid van der Meer explains the benefits of duckweed.
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