Feeling the heat: identifying new pathways for improving fleshy fruit yield and quality under high temperature

Abstract

Enhancing plant thermotolerance is an urgent priority to sustain global food production, ensure food security, and mitigate the impacts of climate change on agriculture. Therefore, understanding the complex regulatory networks and metabolic adjustments triggered by elevated temperatures is key to generating the critically needed climate-smart, heat-resistant crops. Besides the well-established mechanism of phytochrome (PHY)-dependent light perception, PHYs have also been recently implicated in temperature perception in Arabidopsis, with very limited information for other species. Moreover, the free radical nitric oxide (NO) has recently emerged as a multipurpose signaling molecule in plant responses under heat stress. In this project, we aim to dissect the molecular mechanisms behind the impacts of long-term warm conditions on the gametogenesis, fruit set, as well as fruit development, ripening and quality traits of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), an important crop and model system for fruit physiology studies. Developmental genetics, genetic engineering, omics, and bioinformatics approaches will be employed in this project. We foresee this research as providing important molecular and physiological insights for improving, through biotechnology, both productivity and nutritional quality under heat stress in tomato and potentially other fleshy crops. (AU)