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Imprint
P0st harvest losses mitigation by improved plant healing (PHEALING)
Project
Project code: 2821ERA16C
Contract period: 01.10.2021
- 31.05.2024
Budget: 234,021 Euro
Purpose of research: Applied research
Keywords: crop production, vegetable production, potato, climate (climate relevance, climate protection, climate change), product quality, global food security, knowledge transfer, networking
The aim of the PHEALING project is to unlock the chemical and genetic potential of plant healing in the crop plants tomato, potato and cassava in order to use this natural process to reduce post-harvest food losses in locally preferred cultivars and other crop species as well. Many post-harvest losses originate from plant tissue damage or injury. Plants respond to such wounding with a complex healing process. The lipid-based biopolymer suberin plays an important role in this process ('wound suberin'). The current strategies to reduce post-harvest losses are predominantly based on specific storage facilities, which are costly, energy consuming and sometimes unreliable. Knowledge and exploitation of the genetically determined programs of plant healing have the potential to compensate these deficiencies and reduce post-harvest losses in a sustainable manner. The specific objectives of PHEALING are to 1) characterize wound healing in above three model plants, which represent their utilized organs (fruit, tuber and storage root); 2) identify conditions that induce plant healing; 3) determine the molecular basis for wound healing; 4) test novel biocontrol approaches (e.g. bacteriophages, priming molecules) to induce plant healing. In addition, bottlenecks in the implementation of such novel methods will be identified and evaluated together with local farmers. The University of Bonn will develop the methodologies for chemical-analytical, histological and structural analysis of suberin in the three crop plants and subsequently apply these methods to qualitatively and quantitatively characterize suberin biosynthesis and deposition. The aim is to assess the diversity of suberin biosynthesis in selected cultivars and to evaluate the potential of conditions, molecules and microorganisms that induce healing. Transcriptome-based approaches will be used to identify the biosynthetic and regulatory genes of suberisation and wound healing.
Section overview
Subjects
- Crop Protection
