Project Details
Projekt
Coordination Funds
Applicant
Professor Dr. Reimund P. Rötter
Subject Area
Plant Cultivation, Plant Nutrition, Agricultural Technology
Term
since 2026
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 571153016
Research on multiple stresses in crops is highly relevant in view of the challenges of achieving food security for a rapidly growing world population. Accelerated climate change leads to a higher frequency of multiple stresses occurring concurrently. Plant-stress interactions are commonly subdivided into abiotic and biotic stresses and studied separately. Under field conditions, these stress interactions are usually multiple and interactive in character. To date, the mechanisms determining interactions between abiotic and biotic stresses and their effects on crop performance are unknown for most crops and stress combinations. Field data are particularly scarce as most studies have focused on laboratory model systems using few environmental parameters in controlled conditions, which cannot reflect the dynamics in the field. Adequate modelling approaches capable of describing basic crop growth processes and simultaneously capturing response to abiotic and biotic stress interactions and their impacts on crop yield and quality do not exist so far. The goal of the MultiStress Research Unit is to create a deep understanding of the overall impact of combined (abiotic+biotic) stresses on crop physiology and productivity (grain yield, biomass growth and quality, nutrient/water use efficiency, etc.) using maize, one of the most important crops globally, as a model plant. The knowledge gained can in the long-term be utilized to define traits for multi-stress tolerance to be considered in model-aided maize ideotype design for future target environments. To investigate the interactions of drought and nitrogen deficiency with the foliar disease Setosphaeria turc. on the one hand, and stem borer on the other, we will establish a common experimental platform (rainout shelters) in Germany and Kenya. Modelling will be another research pillar to enable integration of new knowledge across scales (from the genome to the crop stand) and extrapolation of results in space and time. This requires development of model routines to formalize new data and insights, iteratively integrating these into a suitable ecophysiological model, and evaluating the resultant novel MultiStress model. Using these approaches, we will test the following hypotheses and their subproject-specific variants: (i) the impact of combined abiotic and biotic stress interactions on crop growth and yield formation and quality is non-additive and thus differs from the sum of individual stress impacts; (ii) while the mechanisms underlying the abiotic and biotic stress interactions are of universal validity, their impacts are modulated by certain environmental conditions (such as temperature, light conditions and soil properties); (iii) based on the experimental data from multiple scales, a mechanistic understanding can be obtained and formalized in process-based crop models; we hypothesize that consideration of interactions between abiotic and biotic stresses improves the predictive skill of crop models.
DFG Programme
Research Units
