MYCROPHOS aimed at understanding the different root adaptive strategies of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) and non-mycorrhizal plants to low phosphate environment. Phosphorous is an essential element for plants, thus its low availability in the soil leads farmers to ensure plant productivity through increasing doses of fertilizers. Prompted by a global consensus encouraging sustainable agricultural intensification, throughout the last decades European researchers have been dealing with the topic through different approaches. Within this project, we have been combining root growth and anion content measurement in response to different levels of phosphate in a large panel of Lotus japonicus and Medicago truncatula natural accessions. In both cases, we were able to implement a high throughput system allowing root image segmentation and root trait quantification. The data has been use for genetic mapping, through Genome Wide Association, and gave as an outcome hundreds of genetic loci associated with variation in root responses to phosphate. Consistently with different targets of Horizon2020 call, MYCROPHOS have set the bases to tackle crop improvement in a holistic manner (considering the huge richness of natural variation among different species as a biodiversity genetic bank), and to seek for novel breeding targets to improve yield. In fact, optimizing high throughput imaging, together with GWAS, is a way to develop novel breeding strategies and tools for a continuous support to a dynamic breeding sector. Moreover wince we identified different genes variants that allowed an increase in accumulation of phosphate in plant tissues of Lotus japonicus, this knowledge could be transferred to other legumes that are used in agriculture.
