DFG Research Unit PlantsCoChallenge
PlantsCoChallenge (PCC) is an interdisciplinary project, initiated by the Kiel Plant Center (KPC) and funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation (DFG); Research Unit (RU) 5640). PCC brings together a dynamic network of plant researchers from Kiel University, GEOMAR Helmholz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, the University of Münster and Tübingen and the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) in Berlin. The Research Unit (RU) is led by Prof. Eva Stukenbrock, Chair of Environmental Genomics at Kiel University, and unites plant scientists from diverse fields including genetics, ecosystem research, phytopathology, plant physiology, and plant breeding.
Today's rapid environmental changes are subjecting plant populations to many different stress factors. The RU will specifically investigate the physiological and evolutionary adaptations of plants to different stress factors such as drought, rising temperatures and increasing pathogen pressure in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Most studies so far have focused on these stresses separately, however we here aim to study the responses of plants to combined abiotic and biotic stress. We will do this in an interdisciplinary framework providing us with a unique opportunity to study plant stress biology.
Today's rapid environmental changes are subjecting plant populations to many different stress factors. The RU will specifically investigate the physiological and evolutionary adaptations of plants to different stress factors such as drought, rising temperatures and increasing pathogen pressure in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Most studies so far have focused on these stresses separately, however we here aim to study the responses of plants to combined abiotic and biotic stress. We will do this in an interdisciplinary framework providing us with a unique opportunity to study plant stress biology.
We will consider plants as metaorganisms, i.e. the plant with its associated below and above ground microbial communities. The main hypothesis of the RU is that increased abiotic challenges following global change will impact plant disease resistance and microbiota composition and functions. From this hypothesis, three main objectives will be addressed.
- We will characterize how low oxygen availability influences biotic signals at the cellular and physiological levels.
- We will characterize how abiotic stress impacts biotic interactions, including pathogen resistance and microbiota diversity and function, at the metaorganism level.
- We will measure adaptive differentiation in combined stress resistance along environmental gradients spanning the distribution range of each model plant species at the population level.
A unique aspect of our program is the integrative research of plant stress responses at different organizational levels
Sub-projects
The RU includes five sub-project (SP1 - SP5) and two central projects (Z1 and Z2). Five species, representing various ecological niches, will serve as our model organisms: seagrass, sea rocket, pondweed, barley, and quinoa. The Z1 and Z2 project are core modules of the RU and will perform core experiments and large-scale comparative analysis.
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“Our goal is not only to deepen our scientific understanding of the diverse ways plants adapt to stress, but also to lay the groundwork for future strategies that could help strengthen economically important crops, enabling them to better withstand changing environmental conditions”
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