On Thursday, 9 January 2025, the election of the Dean of the Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences (FTZ) at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague took place. The Academic Senate of FTZ elected a new dean in the first round of secret voting for the term 2025–2029. The newly elected dean is the current Vice-Dean for Science and Research, doc. Ing. Hynek Roubík, Ph.D.

He will assume the leadership of the faculty on 25 April 2025, succeeding the current dean, prof. dr. ir. Patrick Van Damme, whose term concludes on the same day.

Official Election Results:

• Ing. Petra Chaloupková, Ph.D., dr. h. c.: 3 votes
• doc. Ing. Hynek Roubík, Ph.D.: 6 votes
• Abstentions: 0 votes

 

Members of the Academic Community of FTZ may submit objections regarding the election process within 8 days of the announcement by addressing them in writing to the Chair of the Academic Senate of FTZ. The Senate will decide on any objections with finality within one week of their submission.

We thank the members of the Election Committee for ensuring a smooth election process. Congratulations to the newly elected dean, and we wish him a successful term of office!

The Open Days will take place on Friday and Saturday, January 17–18, 2025, from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM, at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague campus in Suchdol.

Dear students, colleagues, alumni, and FTZ friends! Time flies, and so you are now reading the last issue of our Tropical News of 2024. Even though I hoped in the beginning of the year that this year would be more peaceful, the situation has hardly improved and with the – well not so – new president-elect in the USA it doesn’t look as if the global peace situation will improve in the near future. Sigh (yet again).

However, faithful to our vision and mission, and commitments, our faculty continues to research on a wide variety of subjects, and also to base its teaching on often cutting-edge research results. A number of these received prizes, whereas also our contribution to international networking and teaching activities got rewarded as you will read further into the text.

If you never heard of pangolins, this is your moment to try and dig into these fascinating species; at one moment, they were suspected of transmitting the Covid-19 virus, as a panel of SARS-CoV-2-related coronaviruses was indeed identified in them.

The faculty is actively promoting internationalization, and frequently receives foreign delegations, but also oftentimes links up abroad with research institutes, development projects, and universities. We are proud that so many southern partners want to call us in for collaborative efforts.

I hope you will find this issue an interesting one, and – if you are interested – we could discuss the content over a glass or cup of coffee in our bistro on the ground floor in our faculty building! See you there?!

Desertification and drought, phenomena formerly mainly associated with the African Sahel, are increasingly affecting Europe. Recent figures presented at the 16th UN Conference on Desertification (COP16) in Riyadh show that more than 40% of the Earth's unglaciated surface is now dry, and the situation is worsening even in European countries.