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Coordination: Abdelhafid Bendahmane

Industrial partner: Confidential

Heat, drought and salinity are major threats to nowadays agriculture. Moreover, global warming will accentuate these stresses to a dangerous extent. Furthermore the resistance to one stress does not imply resistance to other stresses which may occur concomitantly in the field.

Within CIFRE PhD thesis we have identified a gene involved in resistance to a large number of abiotic stresses. Overexpression of this gene is sufficient to improve plant resistance to combined stresses. To identify mutant with constitutive resistance to combined stresses, we have developed a genetic screen using the promoter of the gene as biosensor. This strategy allowed us to discover key mutant lines with constitutive resistance. The SPA project focus (i) on the identification of the causal mutations (ii) on the engineering mutant lines that mimic the Arabidopsis constitutive mutants, in a general translational research approach. This is carried out through TILLING, in tomato, and CRIPSR mutagenesis, in rice.