"Plants for a sustainable and regenerative agriculture: modulating the crosstalk between cell cycle, plant metabolism and the environmental signaling"

Abstract :

"One important way plants respond and try to adapt to environmental stimulus is by modulating their growth. The associations that occur between economically important crops with associative and endophytic diazotrophic bacteria have raised a large interest in their use in agriculture, in view of the positive effects on the modulation of root architecture, promotion of plant growth, as well as increase in tolerance against biotic and abiotic stresses. Bioinoculants of associative and endophytic diazotrophic bacteria had been shown to lead to positive results on crop yields, which are dependent on the plant genotype and soil conditions. By using transcriptomic approaches and functional analyses, our group has been studying sugarcane and maize genes involved in the establishment of a beneficial type of association with endophytic nitrogen-fixing bacteria, aiming to assist in the development of more responsive cultivars to inoculants of beneficial diazotrophs. Illumina RNAseq data provided an overview of sugarcane and maize expression profiles in roots and shoots that are controlled by nitrogen, water and endophytic nitrogen-fixing bacteria during a successful association.  Functional analyses of plant genes are being first validated in   A. thaliana, followed by modulation of gene expression in maize and sugarcane. Altogether, the data suggest that several of the genetic controls and expression profiles might possibly be used as tools for optimization of plant growth and response to bioinoculants, presenting a sustainable alternative to the use of chemical fertilizers, with positive economic and environmental impacts on agriculture."