Abstract

Physical or biological stresses cause major reductions in potential productivity of agricultural crops. To maintain the competitive position of European SMEs and agriculture and to secure food production, advances in the understanding of plant stress responses should be rapidly adopted for innovations. We will contribute to the necessary scientific progress by studying specific regulatory proteins with crucial roles in stress adaptation. Using a genetically diverse range of well-characterised model plants, we will analyse how these regulators help plants to achieve specificity in their responses to different stresses. This will deliver strategic knowledge of how tolerance to single or multiple stresses can be achieved by modifications at the level of these regulators and lead to the identification of useful gene products involved in stress responses. These will be exploited within the project to improve and diversify the cultivation of agricultural and horticultural plant species.

Objectives

We aim to provide strategic knowledge of regulatory mechanisms of plant responses to physical and biological stress and to develop molecular tools to generate crops with improved stress tolerance. To achieve the objectives the research will be centred around specific regulatory proteins (transcription factors or TFs) controlling adaptations to stress in a genetically diverse set of plants.

Modifications at the level of such key TF regulators is an attractive approach to stress tolerance improvement since this will influence multiple end products in stress pathways. Generation of high quality, stress-tolerant crops will not only help secure food production, but is also an area of great opportunities for European industry and agriculture. Therefore the project addresses a subject that fits well with the socio-economic objectives of the programme, contributing to action 3.3.4: 'identification and sustainable use of metabolic and genetic diversity as a source of new valuable products'.

Description of the work

The project is focused around specific families of TFs having in common their uniqueness to plants and a key role in regulating developmental adaptations to the environment. In the selected TF families we see a large potential for applications in crop improvement. In the project their role in responses to physical and biological stresses will be further characterised. The performance of plants with altered TF levels will be studied under normal and stress conditions. Also, these plants will be characterised genetically and molecularly to increase understanding of the stress-related signalling pathways. Extensive cross-talk is likely to occur between different stress pathways, which will be investigated in particular at the level of stress-elicited programmed cell death. TF-regulated pathways will be identified by a genomics approach, using expression array screening as a powerful new method to analyse effects on multiple genes simultaneously. Finally, different strategies will be followed to identify genes that are direct targets of the selected TFs. A genetically diverse selection of well-characterised model plants will be used, including non-utilized species as well as important crops. This choice allows exploitation of the expression of the genetic material of specifically adapted plants. Furthermore, it will provide insight into conservation of stress response mechanisms and therefore lower the barriers to extrapolate new knowledge to applications. Actively participating industrial partners will assess the feasibility of using TFs or TF-regulated gene products as tools to improve and diversify the cultivation of agricultural crops and horticultural species by increasing the tolerance to adverse environments. Moreover, the exploitation of TFs for marker-based quality testing will be investigated.

Finally, the Plant Industrial Platform will serve the project to ensure that results are brought to wider attention and are effectively disseminated and exploited.

Deliverables

• Specific stress-related TFs and new TF-regulated gene products will be identified from genetically diverse plant sources.
• Model plants with altered levels of the stress-related TFs will be produced. Analysis of these plants will give insight into functions of stress-related TFs and produce knowledge of interplay and specificity in plant responses to different physical and biological stresses.
• The research will provide strategic knowledge of the feasibility of creating high-yielding tolerant crops for different environments by engineering at the level of stress-related TFs.
• New knowledge and molecular tools will be effectively disseminated and exploited. Industrial partners of the project will assess TFs and TF-regulated gene products for usefulness in stress tolerance engineering programmes. This will produce agricultural and horticultural plant species with a potential improved stress tolerance and provide molecular markers to predict and measure plant quality.

Contacts

Coordinator

• Annemarie H. MEIJER / Leiden University Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences / NETHERLANDS

Participant

• Ida RUBERTI / Consiglio Nazionale delle Richerche Centro di studio per gli Acidi Nucleici / ITALY
• A. Douwe de BOER / Genetwister Technologies B.V. NETHERLANDS
• Julio SALINAS / Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA) / SPAIN
• Francesco CELLINI / Metapontum Agrobios Plant Biotechnology Unit / ITALY
• Dorothea BARTELS / Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Botanisches Institut / GERMANY
• Pablo VERA / Universidad Politécnica de Valencia Instituto de Biologia Molecular y Celular de Plantas / SPAIN
• Peter ENGSTRÖM / Uppsala University Department of Physiological Botany / SWEDEN