PANTHEON — Novel Approaches for Plant Health Monitoring

Results in brief

Novel Approaches for Plant Health Monitoring

Monitoring plants’ health status, verifying diseased plant material and identifying elite genotypes that respond better to stress in the field has become a necessity, but it is still a challenging open problem. Abiotic stress effects on plants are very complicated to monitor as the associated adaptation responses are very complex and require dedicated methods to detect at the early stages of stress onset. Addressing this challenge would lead to the improvement of agricultural practices that include germplasm selection and associated products. Furthermore, so far control strategies for reducing the spread of infected material are largely limited to the production and use of certified plants. Hence, efficient, easy to use, affordable and reliable detection systems for various pathogens represents another major research endeavor. As current monitoring approaches have largely failed to meet the above demands of current agriculture and lack accuracy, in PANTHEON our aim is to achieve a breakthrough by relying on a different and inter-disciplinary approach by building a network of Academic and SME partners with expertise that cuts across disciplines. Inspired by basic and recently defined plant physiology concepts, our vision in PANTHEON is to develop an integrated broad solution for monitoring and assessing plant health and identify elite individuals that can be used in breeding programs. Our pipelines have enabled the early monitoring of imposed biotic or abiotic stressors by applying beyond the state-of-the-art remote sensing approaches coupled with spectroscopy-based methods allowing high spatialization of results during abiotic stress and biotic threats. We have also developed nucleic acid-based detection tools combined with integrated platforms for the label-free, fast and sensitive analysis of subtle changes in DNA and RNA profiles. Finally, we explored the power of advanced computational approaches to identify specific spectral properties, manage datasets and integrate data arising from all these complementary approaches.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Agriculture must adjust to future climate change already pushing growers to constantly try to monitor plants’ health to offset yield losses. To reduce yield losses and facilitate effective management practices constant and precise monitoring of plant health is essential. Current monitoring approaches fall short in fulfilling early detection of physiological perturbations that could threaten productivity and make corrective interventions possible. In PANTHEON, our major goal is to establish approaches with unprecedented precision and sensitivity for constant monitoring of plant health focusing on Brassicaceae and Grapevine. These are important annual and perennial species, respectively, for the EU economy and among the most valuable crops in the world. We will develop remote sensing coupled with spectroscopy-based approaches allowing high spatialization of results during abiotic stress and pest diseases. We will complement these approaches with remote or lab microtechnologies, imaging sensing for label-free, fast and sensitive analysis focusing on early stress perception. In parallel, we will establish computational approaches to manage monitoring data and provide software for monitoring the plant’s health and yields.PANTHEON comprises nine partners, five academic and four non-academic partners. Academic institutions, nurseries, breeders, software developers, and other private sectors will be the main recipients of the novel knowledge and technical advances obtained. The approaches that will be developed can be adapted for monitoring the health of any important plant species, apart from Brassicaceae and Grapevine. Finally, PANTHEON is endowed with significant training activities for the training of the next generation of researchers to meet the growing demands of Academic and Industry settings.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

IDRYMA TECHNOLOGIAS KAI EREVNAS · IRAKLEIOCoordinatorGreece
ADVANCED WAVE SENSORS S.L. · ValenciaSpain
CENTRE DE BIOTECHNOLOGIE A LA TECHNOPOLE DE BORJ CEDRIA · Hammam LifTunisia
CENTRO DI RICERCA, SPERIMENTAZIONE E FORMAZIONE IN AGRICOLTURA BASILE CARAMIA · BARIItaly
CHEMA LABORATORIES ANALYTIKA ERGASTIRIA OE · KorinthosGreece
FERDOWSI UNIVERSITY OF MASHHAD · MASHHADIran
SIGNINUM GESTAO DE PATRIMONIO CULTURAL LDA · Rio CaldoPortugal
UNIVERSITE DE REIMS CHAMPAGNE-ARDENNE · ReimsFrance
WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY · Pullman, WashingtonUnited States

PANTHEON · Novel Approaches for Plant Health Monitoring

Results in brief

Novel Approaches for Plant Health Monitoring

Project objective

Participants

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