RhizoEng · Rhizosphere engineering: influence on signaling behavior and colonization under drought conditions
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-12-01 → 2024-07-01
- EU contribution
- €207,312
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Rhizosphere engineering: influence on signaling behavior and colonization under drought conditions
Developing climate resilience in agricultural crops is a major challenge. The MSCA-RhizoEng action focused on development of a strategy to engineer the rhizosphere for enhanced microbial associations under drought conditions. This was achieved by understanding the belowground signalling behaviour of wheat under drought conditions, followed by manipulating the microbial assembly within the rhizosphere using root exudates, and/or microbial inputs in the form of targeted synthetic community. This strategy successfully improved the aboveground phenotype under drought conditions. The outcomes of this project specifically highlighted the significance of considering chemical ecology of the rhizosphere for its reflection on plant performance under stressful circumstances. Furthermore, the rhizosphere engineering strategy developed in this project offers an innovative approach of utilizing host-signalling knowledge to modulate the belowground ecological interactions to favor a resilient phenotype. Therefore, the outcomes of this action prove rhizosphere engineering as a practical tool for generating abiotic stress resilience in crop plants.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Sustainability of climate smart agriculture is dependent on effectiveness of management strategies. Plant-microbe interactions within the rhizosphere are specifically deliberated to achieve the goal of sustainable crop production. Researchers on a global scale are making serious efforts over the past few decades and have resulted in significantly increase in our understanding regarding various aspects of plant-microbe interactions under abiotic stress, but gap is yet seen in the current knowledge regarding the factors governing host-microbe bilateral crosstalk within the rhizosphere, which has significantly limited the attempts to expedite the host-microbe signaling under abiotic stress conditions including drought. With this proposal I hypothesise that drought-smart cultivation is possible through rhizosphere engineering and that changes in the colonizing microbial consortia may result in resilient, drought resistant plants. To test my hypothesis, I will unite the disciplines of microbiology, plant science, molecular biology, and molecular ecology to decode the root-signaling behavior, microbial assemblage, and subsequent drought tolerance in wheat. I will achieve this by a) conducting a meticulously designed experiment which will allow identification of differential root-signaling behavior in wheat under drought conditions in the natural soil regime; b) multi-disciplinary investigations on soil-microbial dynamics to explain the microbial assemblage and counter-responses in wheat rhizosphere under drought conditions; c) by integrating the wheat-root signaling behavior with the soil-microbial counter responses, which will form the basis to devise ‘rhizosphere engineering’ strategy for improved microbial assemblage and drought tolerance in wheat. Consequently, the outcomes will significantly advance the fundamental aspects of plant-microbial crosstalk under drought conditions in natural soil environment, and emerging field of microbe-aided drought smart cultivation.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- AARHUS UNIVERSITET · Aarhus CCoordinatorDenmark
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101028448
- https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/projects/rhizosphere-engineering-influence-on-signaling-behavior-and-colon
Data: CORDIS, © European Union