Context
Nearly a third of the Earth’s surface is made up of nutrient-poor limestone soils, particularly in temperate and Mediterranean regions. With global warming, these areas will be among the most exposed to heat waves.
A combination of nutritional and thermal stress that poses a major threat to agricultural yields.
To adapt, plants must mobilize complex mechanisms that are still poorly understood today.
Objectives
CalClim seeks to understand how plants perceive, react and adapt to a double stress: heat and calcareous soil.
By combining genetics, systems biology and ecophysiology on three species (including Arabidopsis and durum wheat), the project aims to identify the gene networks involved in this adaptation and pave the way for new crop improvement strategies.
30 % of land area is composed of calcareous soils
37 % yield loss observed for durum wheat in 2018 in Occitanie
3 plant species studied: one cereal and two model plants
