PATRIC

The goal of the PATRIC consortium is to promote competitive agricultural production in sustainable conditions by transnational cooperation in application-oriented plant innate immunity research. This cooperative project aims at the transfer of laboratory acquired knowledge to promote environmentally friendly production systems that comply with the new EU pesticide regulations. A major factor limiting crop productivity and profitability is damage caused by pathogens. The project aims at finding new methods of preventing and treating plant diseases with natural products that enhance the defence of plants. In particular, the consortium will exploit plant innate immunity that allows plants to activate resistance responses upon recognition of pathogen molecules (PAMPs Pathogen Associated Molecular Patterns) by specific receptors (PRRs; Pattern Recognition Receptors). The project is coordinated by an industrial partner that already has priority to some patents developed by other consortium partners and is driven by the need to develop the scientific results for application in agriculture. The long term objective of this project is to diminish or even prevent epidemic diseases affecting major crops, i.e. tomato, barley, potato, oilseed rape and grapevine, throughout Europe and worldwide. New crop protection tools will be developed, such as PAMPs from the major groups of plant pathogens and other bioactive compounds able to activate natural plant defence responses, and some novel concepts such as synergistic activities among these PAMPs/bioactive compounds and plant hormones/pesticides will be explored. Genetic diversity will be also exploited to identify possible sources of PRRs for the corresponding purified PAMPs, as well as downstream components for improving pathogen resistance in plants. These genes (traits) will be used in breeding programs aiming at crop varieties with enhanced capacity to sense and fend off pathogen infection upon exogenous treatment with PAMPs-derived commercial products.