2021-12-12
MiCRop is national research program aiming to harness the functional potential of root microbes as a new platform for improved stress resilience of future crops and sustainable food production. Plants recruit and nurture billions of microbes on their roots. In return, the root microbiome supports the plant by improving the uptake of nutrients, enhancing tolerance to environmental stress and providing protection against pests and diseases. MiCRop will unlock how plants under stress recruit these beneficial root microbes. We will harness the yet unknown plant and microbial traits that facilitate this interaction, and translate their potential for the development of next generation, stress-resilient crops that require less fertilizers and pesticides.
One of the goals of the MiCRop program is to build large culture collection of root-associated bacteria and to phenotype and genotype these isolates. Pure microbial isolates will be shared with all MiCRop partners for dedicated validation experiments.
The application deadline was 15 January 2022,
