BBSRC Institute Strategic Programme: Advancing Plant Health (APH) Partner Grant

Feeding the world in a sustainable way, in the face of the climate emergency, represents one of the major challenges for humankind in the 21st Century. Up to 30% of the yield of our major global crops is lost each year to diseases and pests, despite extensive interventions. If we could prevent these losses- which cost the global economy $540 billion p.a. -it would have a major impact on ensuring global food security. The Advancing Plant Health (APH) Institute Strategic Programme (ISP) will investigate the molecular mechanisms that underpin interactions of plants with pathogens and pests, as well as beneficial microbes. We will build upon recent breakthrough discoveries in our understanding of the plant immune system, microbial pathogenesis, insect parasitism and symbiosis, as well as recent advances in structural biology, machine learning, genomics and advanced bioimaging.

We aim to predictively manipulate plant immunity so crops can be protected against current and emerging diseases and parasites. We will also harness the potential of beneficial microbes to enhance plant growth, enable plants to acquire fixed nitrogen, and ensure plant health. New knowledge gained will be used to enhance crop resilience and sustainable agricultural productivity in the context of the climate emergency. APH has been developed in consultation with industry, plant breeders and growers, so that it addresses the most pressing needs of agriculture.

One focus of APH is to enhance plant immunity to protect crops. Plants have a multi-layered immune system, but pathogens have evolved the ability to evade detection and suppress immunity. We will discover and exploit novel sources of plant disease resistance, focusing on acute problems in UK agriculture such as cabbage stem flea beetle and aphids, as well as legume diseases, where genetic forms of resistance are urgently needed, and major crop diseases such as potato late blight and cereal rusts. In parallel, we aim to determine how plant immune receptors recognise pathogens and activate plant defence, enabling the ability to design new disease resistance genes that can be deployed through precision breeding. We will also aim to understand how pathogens and pests invade and colonise crop plants. We will define developmental and physiological processes in microbial pathogens and insects that allow them to infect plant hosts. We will determine how these functions are genetically regulated and identify the plant proteins targeted by pathogen effector proteins so we can understand how pathogens suppress immunity. We will also investigate the role of other disease susceptibility factors.

In parallel, we will investigate beneficial interactions of microbes with plants. It is clear that the microbial community associated with crop plants is critical to their health. Microbes take part in mutualistic symbioses, for example, providing fixed nitrogen to legumes and enhancing the ability of roots to take up nutrients and withstand drought conditions. The diverse mechanisms that enable microbial consolation of plant cells and tissues will be explored, as well as evolutionary relationships. We aim to understand how environmental changes and chemical applications affect microbial populations in the environment and use this knowledge to develop microbial communities that can enhance plant growth in detrimental conditions and confer resistance to disease.

Finally, we will deploy this knowledge to facilitate durable disease control. Working with industry and international collaborators we will devise new strategies to combat emerging disease threats, deploying durable combinations of disease resistance genes in potato, rice, wheat, Brassica and pea, for example, working in the UK as well as internationally. When considered together, APH will provide a multi-faceted strategy for sustainably enhancing plant health and crop productivity based on a detailed understanding of plant-microbe/pest interactions.

This project represents the Sainsbury Laboratory (TSL) contribution to the delivery of the following Institute Strategic Programme Grant: Advancing Plant Health (APH) BB/X010996/1. The aim of the APH ISP is to generate new knowledge regarding the molecular basis of plant-microbe interactions and utilise this information to develop solutions to combat significant crop diseases and pests, while also promoting beneficial plant-microbial interactions to enhance plant health. TSL contributes to three work packages which aim to enhance plant immunity, mitigate biotic threats to plant health, develop durable disease control, and combat emerging threats. TSL scientists will focus on dissecting mechanisms of NLR immune receptor function and activation, in order to develop crops with enhanced immune responses and novel engineered forms of disease resistance. TSL will provide expertise in identifying mechanisms by which intracellular immune receptors detect pathogen effector proteins and how this leads to immune activation and host cell death. Novel disease resistance genes will also be identified in cereals and potato and deployed in combinations to provide durable resistance. In parallel, TSL scientists will contribute to investigating morphogenetic pathways that regulate microbial invasion of plant cells and facilitate tissue colonization. Host proteins targeted by pathogen effector proteins to suppress host immunity will also be identified and manipulated. TSL scientists will functionally characterise pathogen genes to define their roles in virulence and identify key physiological and developmental processes necessary for plant infection. This will provide new insight into pathogen effector activities and the plant processes which they target. TSL activities will use a combination of genetics, evolutionary and functional genomics, live cell imaging, proteomics, analytical biochemistry and structural biology, providing complementary expertise to colleagues at JIC.