Project description
Water sensing and branching in plant roots
Global warming and dwindling supplies of clean water are intensifying global water stress, particularly in agriculture and arid regions. Plants have evolved remarkable strategies to adapt, shaping their root systems to forage for water. While some of these mechanisms involve abscisic acid hormones, many remain poorly understood. The ERC-funded WATER-BLIND project will investigate how roots detect water scarcity and regulate branching to optimise water acquisition. By exploring the role of ionic fluxes and mechano-sensing in water detection, the project aims to uncover fundamental plant responses, paving the way for innovations in crop research and agricultural resilience.
Objective
Water stress is a pressing global challenge for agriculture, particularly given hostile climate change. Plants have the remarkable ability to shape their roots to forage for water. For instance, roots growing through an air-filled space (e.g. soil gap) temporarily halt branching until re-entering moist soil — an intriguing phenomenon called ‘Xerobranching’.
In a recent breakthrough, I developed an elegant bio-assay to reveal how roots stop branching by employing the abscisic acid hormone when they lose contact with water (Mehra et al., 2022 Science). However, the mechanisms by which roots primarily ‘sense’ water availability is still a puzzle.
My ERC project ‘Water-Blind’ is designed to unravel this mystery and discover ‘how roots sense the absence of water’ to regulate downstream branching response. Built upon my preliminary findings, I hypothesize that roots employ ionic fluxes and mechanosensing pathways to sense water. To test this hypothesis, I will pioneer first-of-its kind screening of ion channel mutants to identify ‘water-blind’ mutants, defective in water perception. Furthermore, I will uncover the underlying molecular networks responsible for this ‘water-blindness’ and ultimately, investigate the consequences of this condition on soil exploration and water foraging. To achieve these ambitious goals, I will exploit interdisciplinary state-of-the-art approaches such as next-generation X-ray computed tomography, phonon imaging, single-cell RNA sequencing and live imaging of advanced biosensors in growing roots tips.
My innovative ‘real world’ approaches will generate groundbreaking insights that will significantly advance current understanding of the molecular and cellular basis of water perception in plants. The fundamental knowledge arising from this project will lay a strong foundation for future translational efforts aimed at improving water-use-efficiency and stress tolerance of crops.
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. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electronic engineering sensors biosensors
- natural sciences physical sciences atomic physics
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics RNA
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG
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NG7 2RD Nottingham
United Kingdom
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