Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PANTHEON (Novel Approaches for Plant Health Monitoring)
Período documentado: 2019-11-01 hasta 2022-10-31
The overall aim of PANTHEON is to create a fundamentally different paradigm of designing and implementing systems for health monitoring inspired by biochemical and biophysical properties of plant cells. In the long term, this paradigm shift can trigger the development of supporting technologies related to the specification, testing and refinement of such systems and approaches, and more specialized platforms for detecting various threats.
A) The establishment of remote and lab monitoring pipelines for abiotic stress with emphasis on early stages of stress management. The monitoring examined scenarios of some of the most important stress perturbations related to water deficit (drought), soil salinity (salt stress) and global warming (heat), but the data were inconclusive and further experiments and correlations need to be made.
B) The establishment of remote and lab monitoring pipelines for biotic stress with emphasis on early stages of plant-pathogen (viral and viroid) interactions. The monitoring has so far examined the most relevant scenarios of viral or viroid, fungal and bacterial infections and has led to the development of novel tools and platforms for the early identification of infection in grapevine.
C) Dissemination and training activities achieved through the secondments of staff, creation of new and lasting research collaborations and transfer of knowledge.
PANTHEON is expected to generate new knowledge and make advancements to the state of the art in several key areas that will enhance the expertise of all partners and enable cross-sector and cross-discipline knowledge sharing. A strongly cross-sectorial and interdisciplinary network promotes exposure to the market needs and exchange of new concepts, methods and approaches. This project will bring together experts with similar goals, from different parts of the world, from various disciplines and academic partners, who often identify first abiotic stress mechanisms or novel pathogenic threats and produce the detection protocols, with the industry that makes monitoring products and eventually uses these products.
The project will increase the awareness of all stakeholders, including the public, about the problems in sensitive and accurate monitoring of plant health in real-time and their suggested solutions.
From an economic viewpoint, it is anticipated that all 3 participating SMEs will directly benefit from the activities of PANTHEON, as protocols for early monitoring and defining threats to plant’s health are of immediate and high interest to SMEs involved, but also eventually to breeders, companies and all nurseries working with similar plant species. In addition, there are planned, direct academic-SMEs collaborations with the aim of producing products that will be commercialized and thus reach end-users. Besides, climate change repercussions on viticulture are being markedly sensed due to soil salinization, water shortage and increased temperatures which affect growth, development and yield of grapevine as well as grape organoleptic and aromatic quality. These parameters will be further exacerbated by spreading of viral, fungal or other pathogenic infections with devastating impact on local and global economies. Hence, our approaches will contribute to offsetting these threats to economy and society.
From a scientific point of view, there are at least three areas of scientific boost: 1. Transfer of knowledge and tools (new germplasm, protocols for defining and monitoring early stress responses, primers and probes, diagnostic methods, etc) between participants. 2. Access to novel biological material to be screened for possible adaptations and identification of tolerant ones and the responsible genes/mechanisms in future studies 3. Training events improving the expertise of involved personnel and annual meetings. The projected outcomes will provide a paradigm for various stress scenarios determination, identification of pathogens and verification of pathogen-free material that can be easily extended to other plant species/conditions providing a general platform for direct exploitation by various research actors.
Given the structure of the consortium the size and geographical distribution of participants, an impact at the social level is also expected. In the great majority of the countries involved the agricultural sector has significant contribution to the national GDP and more importantly agriculture in these countries affects a significant portion of their national and regional activities. Grapevine (Greece, Tunisia, Italy, France, Portugal) and research on Brassica (Italy, France) occupies a large area of the respective participants’ countries and many people in these countries live on such crops. In these ways, project results could impact society in a pertinent way, and can lead to progress in societal challenges such as food security and transition to a biobased economy.