J (Josias) Kern, MSc

My interest in agriculture started early. I grew up next to a small farm in the south of Germany and spent a lot of time on a friend's farm. Combined with my passion for cooking and baking, this led to a strong interest in where our food comes from and how it is produced. I started working on various farms, and attended an agricultural college in the south of England. My curiosity then led me to study Agricultural Sciences at the University of Hohenheim, and I became increasingly aware and concerned about the increasing frequency of droughts in North-Western Europe. However, I also became fascinated with plants' ability to adapt to stress. In particular, drought stress in plants has since been my main field of interest. During my master's degree in Plant Sciences at WUR, this was joined by potato cultivation, which I worked on during my thesis and research internship. Now, during my PhD, I am using remote sensing to characterise genotype-specific potato development under combined stress factors.