Project description DEENESFRITPL Insights and interventions for soil, crop resilience in the changing climate Earth’s climate crisis is jeopardising vital ecosystem services and disrupting food security. It has placed the planet at a critical juncture. Microbial communities, or microbiomes, essential for climate feedback and maintaining soil and plant health, face unprecedented threats. As these microbiomes struggle, our ability to create resilient systems hangs in the balance. In this context, the ERC-funded MicroRescue project aims to recover and reactivate dormant microorganisms to counteract the adverse impacts of climate change on ecosystems and ensure a sustainable future. By understanding and predicting dormant microorganisms’ capacity to rescue microbiomes, the project will develop strategies for plant resilience. Through multi-factor experiments, MicroRescue pioneers microbiological amendments and host-microbiome engineering. Show the project objective Hide the project objective Objective Earth’s climate crisis threatens to disrupt ecosystem services and destabilize food security. Communities of microorganisms, called microbiomes, provide critical functions that feedback on climate and support soil and plant health. I propose a new framework, Microbiome Rescue, to recover microbial populations and lost functions after disturbances. With critical knowledge about the ecology of microbiomes and their contributions to creating resilient systems, I propose that we can achieve a paradigm shift in ecosystem management via directed microbiome interventions. Here, I focus on elaborating rescue strategies that leverage the selective reactivation of dormant microbes. Because microbial dormancy is extensive in soil and the rhizosphere, reactivation offers access to untapped biodiversity and provides immediate solutions for maintaining functions in ecosystems affected by climate change. My first objective is to understand and predict the capacity of dormant soil microorganisms to rescue microbiomes in a changing climate and discover reactivated bacteria that facilitate resilience. My second objective is to investigate and develop bacterial reactivation for rescue-based microbiome management to support plant resilience to climate change stressors and preserve plant-soil feedback. To achieve these goals, I will execute three multi-factor experiments to reactivate the dormant microbiome from soil and plant systems after exposure to heat and moisture stress. First I will perform a heat and moisture experiment for European soils, assess risk, and curate microbial collections that support functional rescue. Next I will perform two practical rescue experiments for the microbiomes of legumes exposed to heat and moisture stress: customized microbiological amendments and host-microbiome engineering. This work will provide unprecedented insights into microbiome rescue and identify targets for biological interventions to support soil and crop resilience to climate change. Fields of science agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagricultureagronomyplant protectionnatural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologybacteriologymedical and health scienceshealth sciencesnutritionnatural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystemsnatural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes Keywords resilience metagenomics disturbance ecology Programme(s) HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme Topic(s) ERC-2022-COG - ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS Call for proposal ERC-2022-COG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants Host institution CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS Net EU contribution € 2 272 881,00 Address RUE MICHEL ANGE 3 75794 Paris France See on map Region Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris Activity type Research Organisations Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 2 272 881,00 Beneficiaries (1) Sort alphabetically Sort by Net EU contribution Expand all Collapse all CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS France Net EU contribution € 2 272 881,00 Address RUE MICHEL ANGE 3 75794 Paris See on map Region Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris Activity type Research Organisations Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 2 272 881,00
