description
- To meet the demands of an increasing global population there is an urgent need to double food production worldwide by 2050. Efforts towards achieving this goal are limited by decreased availability of agricultural land as well as the current scenario of climate change. Changing climate will hamper food production through unpredictable extreme weather conditions as well as by affecting plant growth and development and accelerating crop damage due to plant diseases and pests. Most of the crop plants are increasingly susceptible to diseases at higher temperatures. Climate change, especially increasing temperatures has resulted in the geographical range expansion of plant pathogens and pests. In addition, virulent pathogens with shorter latent periods are evolving faster worldwide. These pose a major challenge to sustained agricultural productivity, let alone increasing yield. This has increased our heavy reliance on agrochemicals. To ensure food security in the changing environmental conditions, there is an urgent need to develop crop plants with a durable and climate-resilient disease resistance to enhance productivity. Efforts are also required to have sustainable agricultural practices with reduced reliance on agrochemicals that accelerate environmental damage. Plants' ability to accelerate their defense system in response to non-pathogenic microbes and certain environmental conditions through priming for rapid aviation upon pathogen infection is promising. Yield losses due to increased diseases can be reduced to a great extent through crop improvement for climate-resilient disease resistance that is not sensitive to increasing temperatures and durable resistance though enhanced priming. Though known for more than nearly a century, environmental influence on disease resistance is not sufficiently well understood for potential applicability. The proposed research will aim to study these processes - temperature induced disease susceptibility and priming - in detail and understand the molecular basis through a series of molecular biology, genetics and biochemistry approaches. A major part of the work will be to understand the genetic basis and thereby understand the underlying molecular machinery. This will be achieved through unbiased forward genetic screens. To study the evolution of temperature induced disease susceptibility and priming, I will study the natural variation using the rich Arabidopsis genetic resources. Several accessions adapted to a wide range of geographic regions and environmental conditions will be screened to define their adaptive strategies to suit the specific environment. This multidisciplinary study will thus generate a wealth of information regarding the molecular aspects of environmental regulation of plant pathogen interactions. Knowledge gathered from these studies will serve as a novel platform for improving crop plants primarily oilseed rape to have climate-resilient durable resistance. These tools could be applicable to other major crops like other brassicas, rice, wheat, potato etc. that are directly under threat of severe diseases as a consequence of climate change. The study will thus enable us to enrich our fundamental understanding of disease resistance and strategies for local adaptation by plants with a direct practical application of crop improvement.