PIF2024 - DECIPHERING THE ROLE OF SIGNALING SUGARS IN CROP RESILIENCE (PID2023-151352OA-I00)

The adaptation and survival of crops largely depend on their ability and plasticity to adapt and survive in changing environments. Currently, agricultural production is threatened by global warming. Thus, it is mandatory to develop new greener crop protection strategies that can maintain crop yields while reducing the application of contaminant chemical inputs. We hypothesized that such new avenues in agriculture might be based on using natural products produced by crops and exploiting the plant's signaling mechanisms. Plants can be an extraordinary reservoir of those bioactive molecules. For example, signaling sugars derived from plant or pathogen cell walls have been shown to play a role in plant defense. Hence, this project aims to identify and characterize the MoA of signaling sugars in crops to fully understand the molecular mechanisms involved in the activation of plant immunity and to develop new bioprotective compounds prone to modulating stress responses. We will first implement a screening protocol to identify immunogenic sugars in Brassica crops and secondly, we will employ a multiomics approach to characterize the MoA of candidate signaling sugars. Thus, our results will contribute to understanding how plants integrate and prioritize external signals with their immune response, a competitive and relevant area of research today, and to develop new bioprotective compounds and discover genetic tools to obtain more resistant and resilient Brassica crops.