Simone Röhlen-Schmittgen

Professor Simone Röhlen-Schmittgen is a leading researcher in vegetable crop science at Hochschule Geisenheim University, holding the Professorship for Vegetable Crops within the Faculty of Horticultural Sciences. Her work focuses on developing climate-resilient vegetable production systems, particularly for cucurbits and tomatoes, addressing the challenges posed by climate change through innovative agricultural approaches.

Her research interests span climate change adaptation in horticulture, stress tolerance mechanisms in plants, priming techniques for sustainable crop protection, organic farming systems, and fruit quality analysis under environmental stress. Professor Röhlen-Schmittgen investigates how thermopriming and other pre-conditioning methods can induce stress tolerance in vegetable crops, potentially reducing pesticide use while maintaining yields under changing climatic conditions.

Analysis of her recent publications reveals a strong focus on thermopriming as a sustainable method to enhance plant tolerance to multiple stresses. Her work demonstrates how heat pre-treatments can induce cross-tolerance to salinity stress in tomatoes, with implications for sustainable greenhouse production. The research shows accumulation of protective compounds like phenols and flavonols, and changes in fruit quality parameters including carotenoids and starch content.

Professor Röhlen-Schmittgen leads two significant research projects: QCuK (Quality of Fruits of Cucurbitaceae in Climate Change, 2023-2026) which examines zucchini varieties under drought conditions, and HortiPrimed (2022-2024) which investigates priming techniques for tomato production. These projects involve multi-site field trials across Germany and interdisciplinary collaborations between plant scientists, breeders, and nutrition researchers.

She actively contributes to knowledge transfer through presentations at major horticultural conferences including the GFPi conference in Bonn and the BHGL-DGG annual meeting in Braunschweig, addressing topics such as climate-resilient zucchini cultivation and stress tolerance mechanisms in vegetable crops.