Pod Yield · “Can bean yield losses caused by drought, heat stress and climate change be ameliorated by enhancing pod-specific stomatal conductance?”
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2017-06-12 → 2020-08-31
- EU contribution
- €237,494
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-GF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
“Can bean yield losses caused by drought, heat stress and climate change be ameliorated by enhancing pod-specific stomatal conductance?”
Droughts in Mexico reduce agricultural production and cause major damage to livelihoods, costing £billions to the economy. Mexico’s reliance on rain-fed agriculture, and its arid zones, makes it vulnerable to drought, yield loss, and soil degradation. Mexico’s geography, population, and urbanisation with habitat loss, make it exposed to the effects of overexploitation of resources, droughts, and climate change. Common bean is the most important grain legume in human diets, and a major source of nutrition. Mexico is a centre of origin, domestication, and diversity for beans, and they are central to Mexican culture and Latin American and African food security. Drought stress is a major concern because most bean agriculture is rain-fed, not irrigated. The development of novel bean varieties and production of beans with greater climate change resilience will impact positively on the poorest communities reliant on timely rains, as well as global Food Security. The overall objectives are to identify mechanisms of drought tolerance from the related desert species, tepary bean, and translate these into common beans to improve water deficit resistance. Characterising drought responses through developmental, physiological, and transcriptomic analyses will help us understand divergent approaches to stress resilience. Stomata are microscopic valves on leaf and pod surfaces that control water loss and CO2 uptake for photosynthesis. By altering stomatal traits such as size and density, we can improve water use efficiency. In this project we compared stomatal traits across beans and used this information to enhance drought resilience to begin creating ‘Climate Smart’ bean crops for Latin American agriculture. By improving water use of bean crops, we can promote more resilient systems of production under climate change, improve economic securities for farmers and maintaining sustainable sources of healthy food.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
CO2-induced climate change is causing global warming and droughts, resulting in crop yield losses. Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) is among the most important food crops worldwide, but is very vulnerable to heat- and drought-induced yield losses. The key objective of this project is to experimentally test the potential for increased pod transpiration to enhance bean pod yield under climate-change-associated drought and heat stress. I will fill an empirical void by, for the first time, testing this critical hypothesis in (1) naturally drought- and heat- tolerant tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifolius) using transcriptomic analysis, and (2) by transgenic enhancement of pod-specific stomatal conductance in the stress-intolerant common bean (P. vulgaris). For comparative transcriptomic analysis of Phaseolus pod drought and heat responses I will be trained in RNAseq, and for transgenic experiments I will produce stable Phaseolus transformants and characterise pod water flux by cutting-edge terahertz spectroscopy during the out-going phase in the lab of Prof. Covarrubias at the Institute of Biotechnology, National Autonomous University of Mexico (IBT-UNAM). I have designed a soybean promoter-driven construct that will direct expression of a dominant Arabidopsis allele to enhance Phaseolus pod stomatal opening and this will be compatible for use in many legume crops. To transfer this important agri-tech innovation back to Europe, I will characterise tepary bean and the transgenic plant’s growth and yield responses to a Future Climate Change Scenario during the return phase at the beneficiary, the University of Sheffield (USFD). At the USFD the group of Prof. Gray has unique expertise in stomatal and guard cell responses to elevated [CO2] and combines infrared thermography and infrared-gas analysis to phenotype whole-plant CO2 growth responses. The project uses an interdisciplinary and translational approach to tackle food security issues under climate change.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD · SHEFFIELDCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
- UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL AUTONOMA DE MEXICO (UNAM) · CIUDAD DE MEXICOMexico
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union