Dr idan Efroni, of the Robert H. Smith Institute of Plant Sciences and Genetics in Agriculture, was chosen as one of forty-one scientists from 16 countries as an International Research Scholar by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, to early-career scientists poised to advance biomedical research across the globe.

Idan Efroni is unraveling the mystery of plants’ impressive regenerative abilities. He uses tomatoes to study adventitious root meristems, which house stem cells that help form roots with stems or leaves. Insight into this process might reveal clues about tissue regeneration in other organisms, and help scientists boost plant production for agriculture.

Israeli scientist wins innovation award for increasing the ancient crop's yield, size and nutrition profile. Dr Zvi Peleg developed an improved sesame cultivar with bigger seeds, more seeds per pod and better bioavailability of the nutrients in the seeds. He and his team are also working to make sesame pods that can be picked by machine rather than by hand. Even though sesame has been cultivated for some 5,500 years, the crop has traditionally been unprofitable because it is difficult to harvest and produces a low yield. 

Kaye Innovation Award for recognizing sesame's value to a hungry planet

By screening more than 100,000 sesame seed variants, Dr. Zvi Peleg has found a way to develop a new elite sesame cultivar with enhanced yield and seed quality suitable for modern agricultural practice. Peleg is a senior lecturer at the Hebrew University's Robert H. Smith Institute of Plant Sciences and Genetics in Agriculture

The Emet Prize  in Life Sciences and Agriculture  is awarded to Prof. Dani Zamir for his groundbreaking research of the genetic control of complex quantitative traits and the application of his studies to plant breeding.