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Alkaloids as signals of stress to modulate microbiome assembly in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum)

Objective

Plants host diverse communities of microorganisms called plant microbiome that provide specific services by several mechanisms.
Because of its capacity to enhance plant nutrient uptake, yield, and tolerance to challenging conditions, the rhizosphere microbiome
stands as a valuable bioresource for fostering sustainable agriculture. However, there remains a lack in comprehending the process of
interaction within the rhizosphere-microbiome ecosystem. Plants secrete a broad of secondary metabolites, which vary with species
and may interact with the biota. Alkaloids, a class of secondary metabolites play a major role in plants' signaling and defense.
Although significant progress has been made in elucidating the role of polyphenols in controlling Arabidopsis roots microbiome,
little is known about the impact of the alkaloids on microbiome shaping. In this project, we intend to dissect the hidden role of
alkaloids in controlling the root microbiome of tomato in response to biotic/abiotic stress and to determine the related microbial
processes and services that will help the plant under stress using a multidisciplinary approach. We first seek to identify the effects of
Phytophthora infestans attack and nitrogen deficiency on the composition of tomato root-microbiome. Then, we intend to unravel
the biological role of alkaloids on microbiome control under stressful conditions. Afterward, the interrelation microbiome and
alkaloids will be better defined using SynComs. Finally, we will employ bioinformatics pipelines to analyze data and to decode the
correlation alkaloids-microbiome-plant performance. The outcomes of this project will provide new insights on the interaction
tomato-alkaloids and microbiome, allowing for a better understanding of alkaloids, and how tomato use it to communicate with the
microbiome under stresses. It will reveal promising avenues for leveraging alkaloids as signals to control and harness the
rhizomicrobiome to enhance tomato fitness and production

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: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITAT ZU KOLN
Net EU contribution
€ 217 965,12
Address
ALBERTUS MAGNUS PLATZ
50931 Koln
Germany

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Region
Nordrhein-Westfalen Köln Köln, Kreisfreie Stadt
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
No data

Partners (1)

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