The certificate of foreign membership of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences was presented to Prof. Andreas Börner by the President of BAS, Corresponding Member Evelina Slavcheva. The ceremony took place today in the “Prof. Marin Drinov” Hall at the Academy during the meeting of the Assembly of Academicians and Corresponding Members of BAS.
Prof. Börner delivered an academic lecture on “The Importance of Plant Genetic Resources for Scientific Research and Breeding”. In his lecture, he outlined the role of plant genetic resources in the development of fundamental research, the improvement of cultivated plants and the safeguarding of food security.
Prof. Svetlana Misheva from the Institute of Plant Physiology and Genetics at BAS presented Prof. Börner’s biographical and academic career, their joint research projects and the long-standing scientific partnership they have built up. Prof. Dr Andreas Börner, Dr h.c., obtained his PhD in plant genetics and breeding in 1988 and was awarded habilitation in 1995. He is a professor at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Halle, Germany, where he supervises a large number of PhD and graduating students.
Between 1997 and 2025, Prof. Börner was responsible for the management and evaluation of genetic resources at the gene bank of the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) in Gatersleben, Germany, which houses some of the world’s largest ex situ collections of cultivated plants and related wild species.
His scientific research focuses on seed longevity, genetic integrity and genetic variation, as well as on the phenotypic and genomic characterisation of genetic resources in major cereal crops and their related species. For more than two decades, he has maintained active scientific collaboration with Bulgarian researchers contributing to the development of research in the field of plant genetics and plant genetic resources in Bulgaria.
Prof. Börner has served as President of EUCARPIA (the European Association for Research on Plant Breeding) and is currently a member of its Governing Board. In 2019, he was awarded an honorary doctorate (Doctor honoris causa) by the University of Life Sciences in Lublin, Poland. Since 2023, he has been an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and since 2025, a foreign member of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences of India.
On 18 June 2026, the Assembly of Academicians elected Prof. Andreas Börner as a foreign member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
