Project description
Unfolding the potential of microbiomes for sustainable agriculture
The impact of diseases and climate change on agriculture leads to yields reduction. At the same time, current agricultural practices like heavy use of fertilisers and pesticides often intensify the issue. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the MicroTRIAS project will contribute to understanding and employing the hidden potential of plant microbiomes to enhance productivity and sustainability in the agricultural sector. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, the project aims to stimulate compositional shifts in plant-associated microbiomes towards beneficial functions, thereby maximising their potential to protect crops from diseases and other environmental stresses, like drought or salinity. Ultimately, the project will render a foundation towards microbiome-based, sustainable solutions in agriculture.
Objective
A major challenge for mankind in the age of climate change is to feed the increasing human population in a sustainable manner. Currently, more than one third of crop yields are lost due to abiotic and biotic stresses, such as drought, salinity, pests and diseases. To minimize this yield gap and to simultaneously reduce the environmental impact of current agricultural practices, future crop production needs to be achieved with reduced input of fertilizers and pesticides. These challenges have increased the awareness of plant microbiomes bearing a hidden untapped potential for crop productivity and resilience that we must learn to use. Recently, more and more microbial products are tested in agriculture but often they are based on one or a few bacteria inoculants. However, the performance and efficacy of these products can be affected by many factors such as, soil type, temperature, humidity and the composition of the native microbiomes. The aim of the microTRIAS project is to unfold the potential of microbiomes by steering the native soil microbial communities towards plant-growth promoting and (a)biotic stress alleviating functions. To achieve this goal, I propose an innovative and ambitious multi-disciplinary approach based on the hypothesis that we can stimulate and train functional and taxonomic shifts in microbiomes on demand to remodel and improve existing communities, rather than introducing new elements in a native ecosystem. Additionally, by monitoring the microbiome changes, using beyond the state of art (multi)omics technologies, I will be able to identify microbes and functions fundamental to desirable microbiome traits. This study will suppose the first proof of concept of this novel integrative approach, opening new avenues for microbiome applications in agricultural settings. The findings of this study will be beneficial for improving agriculture sustainability but also will raise societal climate change awareness on the local and global scale.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologybacteriology
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicsproduction economicsproductivity
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculture
You need to log in or register to use this function
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
29016 Malaga
Spain