Exploring multiple stress adaptation for plant breeding

In natural habitats, plants interact with environmental factors that determine their geographical distribution but also their development.

Agriculture confronts these concepts since tries to maximize the production of species that may not be acclimatized to the environment where they are introduced. In the field, plants suffer stresses that reduce their productivity. These stresses have been studied individually in different laboratories.

The results from those studies have been difficult to implement in the field due to the difference between lab and natural conditions, where there is a simultaneous presence of multiple stresses.

Additionally, global warming is rapidly changing the multi-stress situations that plants will face in Sweden and worldwide.

Spring barley is an important crop that, due to climate change, is attacked by several aphid species, for which there are not resistant cultivars at the moment, so their control relays on pesticides that damage the agricultural and natural environments.In this project we aim to use genomic analysis to characterize the genetic and epigenetic contributions to multi- stress resistance in modern and old spring barley cultivars.

This approach will help to identify the cultivars that better resist multiple stress exposition and also the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms regulating this resistance.

Furthermore, our results will help to mitigate and anticipate the effects of climate change using and environmental-friendly approach.