Descrizione del progetto
Un approccio innovativo all’editing genico per la selezione di precisione delle piante
L’aumento della popolazione mondiale e l’impatto del clima sull’agricoltura mettono ulteriormente a dura prova la sicurezza alimentare. I recenti aumenti vertiginosi dei prezzi alimentari hanno aggravato la crisi globale dell’insicurezza alimentare e della malnutrizione. L’ampliamento delle conoscenze fondamentali sugli enzimi e sulla regolazione genica nelle piante sosterrà la capacità scientifica di migliorare la produzione e affrontare questa crisi. In questo contesto e grazie al sostegno del programma di azioni Marie Skłodowska-Curie, il progetto COLORnamental sfrutterà un approccio innovativo di selezione di precisione in orticoltura basato sull’editing genico e incentrato sul colore dei fiori. I risultati avranno applicazioni di vasta portata, dalla selezione ornamentale di bellissime piante da fiore al miglioramento della sicurezza alimentare globale.
Obiettivo
The COLORnamental team comprises a promising Experienced Researcher (ER) in the field of horticulture and molecular breeding and her future supervising team, i.e. an academic beneficiary in Austria, an associated partner from the commercial horticultural industry in Germany and an academic associated partner in Germany hosting a 6 month secondment. Together they have defined an innovative and challenging research project that offers a well-balanced mixture of research at the interface of fundamental and applied research addressing promising opportunities in the non-academic sector and scientific hot-spots in plant research simultaneously. An innovative breeding approach will exploit flower colour as an established model to implement for the first time the use of MAD7 nucleases in ornamental breeding, and protoplast transformation to modify the bract colour of poinsettia. The genome editing approach addresses the substrate specificity of dihydrolflavonol 4-reductase (DFR) and will promote the accumulation of orange pelargonidin based pigments. Flavonoids, including the colourful anthocyanins, are the most important secondary metabolites, contributing a broad range of physiological functions in plants and humans, the latter when consumed as plant derived food. This makes them an attractive topic for industry and academia across many research fields. The pathway has always served as an important model to establish fundamental scientific knowledge of enzymes, gene regulation in plants and a variety of evolutionary processes. This will allow the ER to augment her expertise with knowledge that is seen as the future of food security, while herself imparting a new perspective to her hosts. A tailor-made training plan, composed of scientific key transferable skills elements for public and private sector employment (research management, presentation and language skills) was designed to empower the ER to move up the career ladder.
Campo scientifico
Programma(i)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Meccanismo di finanziamento
HORIZON-AG-UN - HORIZON Unit GrantCoordinatore
1040 Wien
Austria