PACT for Augmented Crop Tolerance (PACT)

Climate change results in a shifting spectrum of pathogens which establish themselves in our soils and attack our crops. Although chemical plant protection and adjusted fertilization could in part deal with these issues, a growing ecological public awareness limits the application of agrochemicals. In a search for alternative methods to secure food and feed production, the industry now turns to agricultural inoculants composed of bioactive bacterial and fungal isolates obtained from natural rhizospheric soils that exhibit very promising biological activities. For their development as industrial agrobiological agents, several issues will be addressed in this IOF StarTT project. First, based on three bioassays, the three superior isolates will be selected from the collection. With these isolates, a method of inoculation will be optimized in three crops that are used in a typical crop rotation system. Then, important abiotic stress problems occurring in these crops will be mitigated using specific isolates. Finally, to ascertain the durability of the implementation of the isolates we will address their soil survival under our weather conditions and evaluate their effect on the resident microbial communities present in our agricultural soils at two locations. Altogether, the obtained results will facilitate patenting of the isolates and the generated intellectual property combined with the proof of concept that the isolates can be efficiently utilized to improve plant health under adverse conditions will attract strong interest of the industry.