Identifying crucial players in desiccation tolerance: a step towards improving crop drought resistance

Global warming brings with it fluctuating and extreme environmental conditions, including water scarcity (drought, osmotic stress, and salinity). Increasing and prolonged droughts, a consequence of climate change, pose a threat to food security. To improve the drought resistance of crops, current approaches focus on biotechnological and synthetic-biological methods based on the transfer of drought tolerance traits from resistant plants. Resurrection plants emerged as excellent models for studying desiccation with potential application in improvement of crop drought tolerance. Our Project intends to implement the elements of the molecular mechanisms underlying the remarkable phenomenon of plant desiccation tolerance and to improve the drought tolerance of crops. Through a thorough basic understanding of the drought tolerance mechanisms using an “omics” approach, we will identify the key players required for improved water deficit tolerance in crops. The overall Project aim is to identify a list of candidate genes responsible for desiccation tolerance in Ramonda serbica in order to integrate them into a strategy to improve crop drought resistance. First, we will identify the differentially expressed genes and the differentially abundant proteins in fully hydrated, desiccated, and rehydrated (recovered) leaves of R. serbica. These results will provide a list of the key metabolic pathways involved in desiccation tolerance. The ultimate goal is to express the selected candidate proteins/enzymes in tomato and validate their role in drought tolerance. The results of our project will be relevant for agriculture, food industry, biotechnology and plant physiology. The partner groups involved in this project (Italian: DAFNAE and Serbian: IMGGE) were selected for their expertise in proteomics, transcriptomics and plant stress physiology. The transfer of expertise between the partner laboratories will be ensured by mutual training of the PhD and young researchers involved.