The Insect Whisperer

Within a minute, the desk turns into a meadow. A moment ago, the woman was writing emails on the computer and straightening the monitor, which is standing on three books. But there is the door. Students come in through it every few minutes, most of them with a question, others handing in a paper. And then a second-semester student comes in, handing over a black plastic bag. Rana Samara, Professor of Agricultural Science and Plant Protection, widens her already wide eyes - and pours out the contents, lots of plant leaves, on her empty desk, here in room 314, third floor of Kadoori University in Tulkarm, Palestinian West Bank. "It's like a mystery bag," she beams, "you never know if you'll discover something new."

Samara is looking for pests. She pulls a magnifying glass out of the left-hand drawer of her desk and sorts the leaves into three piles: "These are viruses, these are beetles - and these, yes, these are scale insects".  The student took notes, her task was to look for diseased plants. And came back with rich pickings. Not only in Palestine, crops everywhere are suffering more and more. There is the increasing resistance of pests to chemical pesticides, but above all climate change is opening up a new, difficult chapter in agriculture: Heat, drought and frost are on the increase. Sometimes too little, sometimes too much precipitation. And with the help of the increased temperatures, the heat-loving pests are migrating, covering distances, sometimes across continents, that they never could before. This puts Palestinian agriculture under stress and in a pole position. Because all these challenges will come to Germany. Samara is looking for ways to meet this challenge. The entomologist's specialty is biological pest control.

"Nature has many solutions at hand," she says, "you just have to look for them and find them". Her research is also pioneering work for the Global North.

Samara, 50, is one of those professors whose door is always open and she is usually approachable. And when she steps into the corridor, students surround her after a few moments. One of them hands her his term paper, a report on a visit to a farmer: The students are supposed to note down problems on the farms and suggest solutions for the farmers. "The handwriting is too small," Samara says curtly, "they won't read it". A Master's student asks if Samara will drop by the lab later, she starts with oil experiments; self-extracted plant solutions that are tested for their repellent properties against pests. "How many new solutions did you have to make?" asks Samara. A week ago, Israeli soldiers marched through the campus, academic work was suspended - and oils that had already been made had spoiled in the meantime. "Five," says the student.

The Faculty of Agriculture is a bright, spartan building with high windows; in the spacious stairwell, students sit on the steps and joke with each other, but most of them mumble and memorize material in silence. In the cafeteria on the first floor, a truck-sized poster displays photos of members of the student parliament who have been arrested by Israeli security authorities; their names sometimes show Muslim, sometimes Christian origins. Samara wants to go to the university's experimental fields. She walks along short-mown grass, planted with ornamental trees, and heads towards a wall: the fortress wall that separates Israel from the West Bank. The university, founded in 1930, is located directly on the border. Science in the region is under constant threat. Due to the conflicts between Israeli soldiers and settlers on one side and the Palestinian population on the other, it is unpredictable whether or not roads can be used and whether or not classes can take place, for example. Today, two of Samara's four children have stayed at home - the school route to Nablus is blocked after an Israeli raid on a bomb workshop.

Cucumbers, oranges and melons grow in the agricultural field; the researchers use different seeds and compare them with each other.The smell of strawberries wafts from a greenhouse."Ah, my breakfast," says Samara and pops one into her mouth. The fruit is stuck in gutters hanging from the ceiling:The hydroponic system takes up one storey, the fruit manages without soil and thrives on water-based mineral nutrient solutions."Land in Palestine is scarce", says Samara, "we are trying out new and effective forms of cultivation".Water is also a valuable resource in the region. The strawberries obtain "gray water", i.e. tap water from households that has already been used and recycled. "The farmers are difficult to convince to use this too. But it works. And constant dripping wears away the hard stone." She laughs.

Samara's career path reflects the history of Palestinian society. Growing up in Kuwait, she knew no trees, no grass, only desert sand. Many Palestinians lived in the emirate, her father served as an officer in the Kuwaiti army, but with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's attack on the country and his defeat, most Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait in 1991 - as punishment for the fact that the then PLO leader Yasser Arafat had taken sides in the invasion. The young Rana came to Amman in Jordan, where she completed her A-levels immediately after her arrival; because of the flight and the change to a different school system, her grades were not very good. However, these generally determine which subjects you are allowed to study: in her case, the choices were geology or agricultural science. Samara had always loved watching animal documentaries on TV as a child, opted for agriculture - and was introduced to the world of insects in the very first semester during the lecture series on plant protection. It opened her eyes.

"I'm fascinated by insects," she says as she walks towards the lab, "they're so versatile, show intelligent behavior - they're smart."

She started working for an agricultural company while still a student, she says: "I documented crop protection measures and archived the effects of chemical pesticides. So many poisons were used!" It opened her eyes a second time. "We eat the pesticides, they are everywhere." In Palestine in particular, pesticides are even used that are banned in Israel and smuggled over. And what solution does she have? Samara pulls out her smartphone and shows pictures of date palms. "These here have been attacked by weevils in the Jordan Valley." You can only see the disease from the outside when the palm trees, some of which are 15 years old, suddenly die inside, hollowed out. The beetles had developed resistance to chemical pesticides. "But one of my students discovered a fungus that can drive these animals away if it is cultivated on the palm trees. Or the owl moths: three years ago, coming from Latin America, they began to decimate Palestinian maize agriculture, laying their eggs in the fruit. Their larvae then eat the maize, but chemicals alone did not help. "We used positive methods from Africa and reinterpreted them for our region," Samara recalls.

Samara completed her doctorate in Germany with a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). She deepened her knowledge of biological pest control at the University of Hohenheim. "All these skills are becoming more important with climate change." Palestinian agriculture is becoming increasingly important due to rising poverty. “Government employees alone are currently only receiving 80 percent of their original salary due to the ongoing economic crisis - everyone is saving and trying to grow their own food." She estimates that 80 percent of all Palestinians do this and use every square meter of arable land, even in the cities. "Because of the lack of water, we now have to switch to more resistant varieties," says Samara as she hurries back up the stairs to the second floor of the faculty.

"We have found that old, almost forgotten wheat and barley seeds in particular are now doing well and adapting better."

The groundwater, especially that in the Jordan Valley, is very salty, and because there is no rain, "you need plants that can cope with that." As there is also often a lack of electricity, more and more work is being done with photovoltaics, "this is increasing rapidly, including in agriculture". And another project at the faculty: Farmers are being taught to compost their own waste, for better fertilizer." A lot is happening, and it has to. It is a basket of ideas designed to make the region's agriculture fit for the future, also providing a learning experience for those in the Global North.

Lunchtime has already passed, and apart from a strawberry and coffee, Samara has nothing in her stomach - but now she opens a lecture room. "What are threadworms?" she asks ten students on the right-hand side of the room and three female students on the left. Several arms go up and Samara quickly takes her young academics into the realm of nematodes: "20,000 species have been described," she says, "but estimates range from 100,000 to ten million species. The students' mouths are agape at these dimensions. Threadworms are increasingly being used against plant pests. Samara now goes into detail, raving about the ultra-thin wings of the Hufnagel butterfly or the moth of the cotton worm - "it flies one and a half kilometers in four hours". At the end, she collects homework, the advice brochures for small farmers produced by the students. "The young people have been through a series of disasters," says Samara as she strolls to her office with the papers under her arm. Due to riots and corona lockdowns, lessons have been lost, "real basic knowledge. Now we are catching up, for example on how to make presentations. Interaction also needs to be learned".

At around 2:30 p.m., Samara leans back in her chair and starts to feel tired. She has been on her feet since five. The many commitments, the political tension, it's exhausting. Her gaze lingers on the only picture in the office: a photo of Niagara Falls on the wall opposite; a souvenir from her post-doc phase in Canada. But, she says, there are the inquisitive students, the importance of her work for agriculture and therefore for so many people who depend on her. She did not have her term as Dean of the Faculty extended, "I hardly had any time left for research - that's what I love most about it". Would anything else appeal to her? She thinks about it. "As a student, I worked in a flower store, the scents, the beauty - I liked that. "Sometimes, she says, she dreams of a flower store with her in the middle of it. A Russian poem about flowers says: "Let flowers grow, let ideas grow, let the seedlings of your own creation grow and cultivate yourself and others." It seems that Samara's dream has long since become a reality for her.