CORDIS provides links to public deliverables and publications of HORIZON projects.
Links to deliverables and publications from FP7 projects, as well as links to some specific result types such as dataset and software, are dynamically retrieved from OpenAIRE .
Exploitable results
Given the continued public concern regarding the environmental consequences of the use of agri-chemicals including pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers, there is a drive towards the development of more environmentally friendly strategies to reduce plant disease and increase plant growth. Microbial inoculants (biocontrol agents, phytostimulators and biofertilizers) and GM plants could potentially play a pivotal role in sustainability, but require through investigation to determine their ecological impact within the environment in which they are to be used. It was postulated that the accurate assessment of the ecological impact of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) would require a multidisciplinary consortium consisting of microbial ecologists, microbiologists and agronomists. The IMPACT II consortium, which consists of a network of 17 research and industrial centers, was established to develop and assess the efficacy of GM plants producing antifungal metabolites and GM microbial inoculants, and to assess the impact of GMOs developed within the consortium on the indigenous microbial population. In addition to strain construction (GM Pseudomonas, Azospirillum and Rhizobium inoculants), the programmes objectives were to develop the necessary tools for accurate assessment of GMO impact (particularly on beneficial microbial populations, including AM fungal populations) and to conduct meaningful field-scale release experiments involving industrial participation. Results have demonstrated that the GM inoculants constructed within the consortium, which are among the first GM inoculants to be granted field release permission under EU Directive 90/220, do not significantly effect the indigenous population compared with wild-type strains.
Due to their efficacy and impact they represent inoculants which will have an important future as environmentally-friendly alternatives to chemical products and thus will contribute to sustainability within agriculture. Further more, the techniques for monitoring the indigenous microbial population are methods which can be employed for the effective assessment of the ecological impact of both GM inoculants and plants.
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