Announcements, new papers, awards and events from the lab.
Our supervisor Bahar Yıldız Kutman presented biochar-perlite growing media, the PhD thesis topic of our doctoral student Ömer Faruk Taştan, as an invited speaker at Koç University on 5 November 2026.
Our supervisor Bahar Yıldız Kutman introduced BİKÜME in the session on supporting institutions and programmes at the Bioexpo Biotech/Medtech Entrepreneur Stage on 16 October 2026.
Our research assistant Rıfat Buğra Bildiri met high school students at the ENKA Schools Career Day on 21 October 2026 and told them about study and career opportunities in biotechnology.
Our supervisor Ümit Barış Kutman presented at the BİKÜME introduction and stakeholder development meeting hosted by the Gebze Chamber of Commerce; two of our research assistants serve in the BİKÜME secretariat.
On October 7, 2026 we presented our work to visitors from the National University of Sciences and Technology in Pakistan and Kaiserslautern Technical University in Germany; digitalization in agriculture, image processing and sensor applications came to the fore.
Our supervisor Ümit Barış Kutman gave an oral presentation on dried duckweed biomass as a boron-binding soil amendment, produced by recovering nutrients from agricultural drainage water, at ICDRA 2026.
Our traditional lab dinner was held at Tuzla Sailing Club on 24 September 2026, at the start of the new academic semester.
Burak Tunçbaş presented a poster on urea-loaded biodegradable superabsorbent polymers and nitrogen use efficiency in wheat at the 6th International Symposium on the Nitrogen Nutrition of Plants.
The LAMP-based biosensor project of Nordik, a venture of two GTÜ Institute of Biotechnology PhD students that our lab helps advise, has received TÜBİTAK TEYDEB 1507 support.
Aleyna Su Bostan, who presented her graduation project in May, spoke as valedictorian at the graduation ceremony on 11 July 2026.
Ezgi Şengül, Zehra Sena Behram and Emir Taha Selman completed their MSc degrees and attended the graduation ceremony on 11 July 2026.
A paper by Ayşenur Bayrak has been published in Agronomy, another Q1 publication from our lab.
On June 16, 2026 our team visited Keskin Kimya with the GTÜ Technology Transfer Office to discuss joint projects in plant nutrition, agricultural R&D and biotechnological applications.
A paper by Ömer Faruk Taştan of our lab has been published in the journal Horticulturae.
Our paper on brown seaweed Cystoseira barbata extracts as biostimulants for wheat seedlings is among the top 10% most-read articles published in Physiologia Plantarum in 2024.
Project proposals by Elif Mutluay and Aleyna Su Bostan to the TÜBİTAK 2209 undergraduate programme were conditionally accepted.
Prof. Morten Meldal, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2022, gave a seminar at the Congress Center on 10 April 2026.
Our research assistant Rıfat Buğra Bildiri won the best oral presentation award at CSRW26 in Thessaloniki with his study on duckweed and mineral recovery from agricultural wastewater.
Lentify, an early-stage startup run by members of our team, won first place in the TTO Business Plan Competition and received a prize of 100,000 TL.
On 11 February 2026 Bahar Yıldız Kutman spoke to 300 students at Çayırova Girls' Anatolian İmam Hatip High School, and our team ran a plant pigment extraction activity.
Teknopark İstanbul General Manager Prof. Dr. Abdurrahman Akyol and Board Member Dr. Mehmet Akif Özyurt visited the R&D greenhouse of the GTÜ Institute of Biotechnology.
Our lab took part in the 2nd International Congress on Biotech Solutions for Sustainability, hosted by GTÜ, with 16 abstracts.
Yağmur Arıkan Algül, who carried out her doctoral research in our lab, has been awarded her PhD.
The Migros-coordinated Tarım2030 project was accepted under the TÜBİTAK 1833 SAYEM Green Transformation call; GTÜ is a coordinating partner and our lab takes part in the work.
Our high school internship programme started on 24 July 2025 at the Plant Biotechnology, Physiology and Nutrition Lab of Gebze Technical University.
Lentify, the early-stage startup run by our team, ranked in the top 10 of the EIT Food category in EIT Jumpstarter 2025 and qualified for the third stage, the Local Joint Training.
Rıfat Buğra Bildiri, a member of our team, defended his master's thesis on 7 July 2025.
Başak Ayyıldız and Simay Akpınar, who did their graduation projects in our lab, represented Türkiye at the UrbanFarm 2025 final in Stockholm; Başak's team Flourish won first place.
On May 24, 2025, research assistant Burak Tunçbaş from our lab trained GTÜ-BİOS club students in element analysis with ICP-OES, from acid digestion to interpreting the results.
On May 9, 2025, an Anadolu Group Holding delegation with representatives from Migros, Coca Cola, Anadolu Efes and Adel visited the GTÜ Institute of Biotechnology and heard about our research.
Ümit Barış Kutman, one of the principal investigators of our lab, took part as a guest expert in the water episode of Günlük Hayat Bilimi on TRT Belgesel.
On April 22, 2025, our PIs Bahar Yıldız Kutman and Ümit Barış Kutman accompanied an İGSAŞ delegation on a tour of the GTÜ Institute of Biotechnology and our R&D greenhouse.
Buse Bıyıklı and Rıfat Buğra Bildiri's Naturalg project won second place in the Level-Up category of the 6th TechXtile Challenge Design Competition.
In the 2024/1 term of the TÜBİTAK 2209-A programme, 11 undergraduate research projects from the GTÜ Institute of Biotechnology were funded, several of them advised by our PIs.
Five of the six TÜBİTAK 2209-A applications submitted from our lab were accepted.
At OpenLab 6 on 21 December 2024 the lab shared elemental analysis results for mineral waters alongside the values on their labels.
At the Gastromasa Gastronomy Conference in Istanbul on 13-14 November 2024, our PI Bahar Yıldız Kutman discussed university and industry collaboration with Eataly Istanbul chef Claudio Chinali.
On September 3, 2024, the Agriculture Minister of the Philippines visited the greenhouse that our lab runs at the GTÜ Institute of Biotechnology.
Rıfat Buğra Bildiri, Ayşenur Bayrak and Elif Özlem Günçaldı gave oral presentations at Biotech4Sus'24.
GTÜ TTO Inc. took a 3% stake in Agriverts, the vertical farming AI start-up founded by GTÜ student Abdullah Duman and advised by our PI Ümit Barış Kutman.
We completed our Open Lab 5 event at the GTÜ Institute of Biotechnology on December 23, 2023.
Our PI Ümit Barış Kutman spoke about green R&D and start-ups in agriculture on the Green Start-Up World panel at the Green R&D Conference on 15 November 2023.
Together with GTÜ Rector Prof. Dr. Hacı Ali Mandal and Vice Rector Prof. Dr. Işıl Aksan Kurnaz, we visited Plant Factory's vertical farming facility inside the İstinyePark shopping mall.
Seven researchers from our lab gave oral presentations at the BioTürkiye congress in Istanbul, 28 to 30 September 2023.
Our second proposal to the TÜBİTAK and TAGEM joint 1003 call was accepted at the end of a rapid revision process.
Our lab ran a stand at the launch of the GTÜ and İstanbul Teknopark cooperation protocol.
The Plant Factory opened at İstinye Park on 27 April 2023, and its first produce went on sale at the İstinye Park Macrocenter.
Our project to develop a soilless growing substrate from tomato waste was accepted under the ADEK programme with a total budget of about 1,116,000 TL.
Under the TÜBİTAK and TAGEM 1003 Agricultural Research Joint Call, the mycorrhiza and bacteria consortium project led by Ümit Barış Kutman was accepted for support.
Özgür Altundaş successfully defended his MSc thesis at the Institute of Biotechnology on 6 March 2023.
Ümit Barış Kutman wrote chapter 9, Mineral Nutrition and Crop Quality, and Bahar Yıldız Kutman the Nickel section of chapter 7 of the fourth edition, published in December 2022.
The LignoNANO project, coordinated by the Sabancı University Nanotechnology Research and Application Center (SUNUM) and with our lab as a research partner, has been accepted under the 1004 Centres of Excellence Support Programme.
Gebze Technical University has signed a cooperation protocol with MNS University of Agriculture in Multan, Pakistan, and our lab has been invited to the partner's online seminars.
Taşkın Kerem Koçak defended his thesis on 17 August 2022 in the amphitheatre on the basement floor of our new building at GTÜ.
The indoor vertical farming R&D facility built with Plant Factory in the greenhouse area of the GTÜ Institute of Biotechnology opened on 28 July 2022.
The home soilless smart garden, first product of about a year of R&D collaboration between the GTÜ Institute of Biotechnology and the start-up Vahaa, was launched in Istanbul on 27 May 2022.
The first GTÜ and GÜBRETAŞ R&D workshop was held at the GTÜ Congress and Culture Centre, with our PI Ümit Barış Kutman among the participants.
The GTÜ Smart Agriculture Research and Application Center (ATAM) and MANAKİN Elektronik Yazılım signed a protocol on domestic smart automation systems for vertical and soilless farming.
Our project on the biostimulant potential of Cystoseira barbata seaweed extracts on wheat, led by Asst. Prof. Bahar Yıldız Kutman, was accepted for TÜBİTAK 3501 support.
Kale Group set up a Sustainable and Traceable Agriculture Test and Analysis Laboratory on the GTÜ campus for high-sensitivity element analysis of soil, fertilizer, plant and food samples.
Büşra Elkatmış's TÜBİTAK 2209-A project on the effects of nickel and cobalt nutrition on nodulation and biological nitrogen fixation in alfalfa has been accepted.
Our lab signed a protocol with Mavruz Tarım of Kale Grubu that runs for ten years and brings an element analysis laboratory and 1,050,000 TL worth of instruments to our university.
Burak Tunçbaş defended his thesis on 26 January 2021, and we celebrated the same afternoon in the greenhouse.
Zehra Sena Behram won the best MSc seminar award and Hande Mutlu Durak won the best PhD seminar award.
GTÜ and Plant Factory signed a four-year R&D cooperation protocol on indoor soilless vertical farming in December 2020; our lab runs the academic side.
Asst. Prof. Ümit Barış Kutman spoke about food production beyond Earth on the Mars episode of Teke Tek Bilim, broadcast live on Habertürk on 29 November 2020.
The Institute of Biotechnology R&D Greenhouse, built under the 2019 protocol between GTÜ and GÜBRETAŞ, opened on 23 October 2020; our lab runs it.
