Analysis of the regulation of stress tolerance and growth to improve stress responses under water scarcity in crops

Project Information

ReadyToGo

Grant agreement ID: 705427

DOI

10.3030/705427

Project closed

EC signature date 16 March 2016

Start date 1 October 2016

End date 30 September 2018

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 183 454,80

EU contribution

€ 183 454,80

Coordinated by

ROYAL HOLLOWAY AND BEDFORD NEW COLLEGE
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ReadyToGo (Analysis of the regulation of stress tolerance and growth to improve stress responses under water scarcity in crops)

Reporting period: 2016-10-01 to 2018-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Problem/issue being addressed
Drought is a major constraint on crop production and food security. Plant adaptation to water scarcity induces stress responses and the reduction of shoot growth to preserve and redistribute resources. Plant hormones are central to modulate growth rate to match the environment. This involves a transient growth arrest upon drought, which is instated by chromatin-mediated regulation of gene expression.

Why is it important for society?
Water is a precious resource, and its availability is, and will increasingly become a challenge through climate change. It is not known how general this growth adaptation is, and what mechanisms apply to modulate fruit growth.

What are the overall objectives?
This multidisciplinary project will bring together the researcher’s expertise in hormones and drought stress biology, that of chromatin regulation and high-throughput data analysis, of the host, and crop stress physiology and phenomics of the non-academic partner. The objectives are
1) to establish how growth rate is reset upon controlled drought stress,
2) the involvement of plant hormones and chromatin modification to co-ordinately regulate stress tolerance and growth
3) functionally characterise the transcriptional repressor complex
4) use high content phenotyping to establish whether modulating the expression levels of central transcriptional repressors can lead to yield benefits during drought
The results will have undiscussed impact on the cultivation of an important crop in the changing climate environment.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The work performed resulted in improving the understanding of
(1) Plant hormone-controlled drought stress adaptation of leaf growth in model as well as crop plants; (2) Drought stress adaptation of plant organs.

The work carried out included (1) Detailed physiological measurements of stress adaptation, growth and cell cycle characterization of plant organs during development upon hormone treatment under controlled drought conditions; (2) Gene expression profiling imposed by drought and hormone treatment in plant organs; (3) Determine the chromatin landscape following treatment (4) Determine the molecular mechanism associated with chromatin modifying complexes formed on growth-regulating genes during treatment.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The molecular mechanism of growth adaptation to drought in crops is barely studied and data mining revealed that in-depth functional analyses are still very limited. The project is therefore extremely timely and used a multidisciplinary approach to advance our knowledge through the following results: (i) identifying the effects of drought on growth arrest rather than survival (ii) linking drought stress and hormone signalling to growth inhibition; (iii) identifying chromatin regulators with a focus on yield benefits in drought conditions.

The project has contributed to the advance of fundamental knowledge through publications (published submitted and in preparation) and to train researchers in new areas that demand professionally trained specialists; has contributed to increasing the awareness of the public through dissemination at activities such as EPSO ‘Fascination of Plants Day’ to present breakthroughs in the plant science and explore new potential applications originating directly from the work on drought in crops in the light of climate change.
The work has also positively impacted on establishing link between academia and industry at national and international level, including developing countries.

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