Root Metabolites in Plant Resilience

Arabidopsis thaliana / Brassica rapa

What we do?

To understand how stress stimuli in leaves promotes a danger signal on roots that activates a specific recruitment of soil microbiome and the remodeling of root architecture in crops, thus improving plant resilience to an adverse environment.

*Ref. Bai et al., 2021

We know...

that the attack of pathogens and pests in leaves is transduced in metabolite production in the roots of model spp…

*Funding will be requested to private entities: BBVA, La Caixa

Deciphering the role of root exudates in plant resilience

…and we wonder if there is also a terpene production on roots of crops in response to biotic stress that alleviates the negative effect of adverse environmental conditions.

Can we use root terpenes to burst Brassica resilience?

We are analysing several Thalianol Synthase coding genes in B. rapa that are up-regulated in response to JA, specifically in the roots.

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