Project description
Alfalfa varieties with improved carbon storage capabilities
Increased efforts towards the green transition and climate change mitigation have significantly boosted the adoption of renewable solutions and sustainable practices. However, the field of carbon capture has seen fewer innovations and solutions. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the CtR project will study the carbon storage capabilities of alfalfa forage. It will also use advanced genetic techniques and microprotein engineering to develop novel alfalfa varieties with steeper and deeper roots capable of storing more carbon underground. The project will investigate the genetic networks of alfalfa root systems, develop advanced deep-learning methods to measure root system architecture, and create efficient strategies for engineering alfalfa proteins to achieve the desired traits.
Objective
Carbon to Roots aims to improve alfalfa, the most grown forage in the world, to help fight climate change by storing more carbon from the air into the soil. By using advanced genetic techniques and microProteins engineering, the project will develop alfalfa varieties with deeper and steeper roots. These improved root systems will store more carbon underground, reducing the amount released into the atmosphere.
This research will fill three major gaps:
1. Understanding the genetic networks that control alfalfa's root system.
2. Developing deep learning methods to measure root system architecture in alfalfa.
3. Creating efficient strategies to engineer alfalfa's proteins in a dominant fashion, obtaining steeper and deeper roots bypassing homozygosity in tetraploid outcrossing alfalfa varieties.
The project will use cutting-edge technologies and infrastructure and collaborate for two years with experts at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, leveraging the existing knowledge and technology in root architecture for carbon sequestration within the Harnessing Plants Initiative to achieve these goals. The knowledge acquired at Salk will be used in the final project year, when selected alfalfa varieteis will be transformed and regenerated in Denmark, at the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences of Copenhagen University, using the alfalfa tissue culture expertise of the research fellow and plant transformation infrastructure available there. The expected outcome is alfalfa plants that store more carbon in deeper soil layers, helping to mitigate global warming, as well as improve soil health and the drought resistance of the selected varieties. The discoveries achieved in this project will also benefit other crops improvement efforts. In fact, alfalfa has an incredibly high natural variation, which will be explored in Carbon to Roots to understand what are the gene variants and gene networks responsible for steeper and deeper roots in crop systems.
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: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences biochemistry biomolecules proteins
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture industrial crops fodder
- natural sciences computer and information sciences artificial intelligence machine learning deep learning
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences atmospheric sciences climatology climatic changes
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
1165 KOBENHAVN
Denmark
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.