Technical visit of visiting professor from abroad aiming to strengthen the partnership between graduate programs of FCAV/UNESP and LSU

Abstract

With this proposal, we would like to request financial resources to the São Paulo Research Foundation (Fundação de Apoio à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo), FAPESP, aiming to afford expenditures with flight tickets, accommodation, and meals for the Visiting Researcher Michael Joseph Stout. Dr. Stout is a Full Professor at Louisiana State University, LSU, Baton Rouge, LA, USA. The request for funds from FAPESP Visiting Researcher Assistance is to afford his stay during eight (8) days of visit at the School of Agriculture and Veterinarian Sciences (Faculdade de Ciências Agrárias e Veterinárias), UNESP, in Jaboticabal, SP, Brazil, from 28/11 to 06/12 of this year.Michael Joseph Stout is a professor and researcher in Agricultural Entomology, working on Host Plant Resistance and Insect-plant interactions, whose research lines are of similar interests of ours. Moreover, the foreign researcher is one of the collaborators of the projects FAPESP no. 2014/11700-6 and no. 2014/08373-3, related to the Post-doc grant of Bruno Henrique Sardinha de Souza and Doctorate grant of Wellington Ivo Eduardo, under my supervision. Professor Stout's visit to Brazil has as main goals to strengthen the relationship between the Laboratory of Host Plant Resistance to Insects (Laboratório de Resistência de Plantas a Insetos) and the Graduate Programs in Agricultural Entomology, Plant Production, and Genetics and Plant Breeding of FCAV/UNESP with the Department of Entomology of LSU; discuss the results obtained from the researches that have been conducted jointly between his laboratory and ours; lecture classes in the course "Special Topics in Agricultural Entomology: Constitutive and induced resistance, antioxidant and secondary metabolism, and implications in plant-insect interactions" to students of the Graduate Programs in Agricultural Entomology, Plant Production, and Genetics and Plant Breeding of FCAV/UNESP; visit commercial fields of sugarcane and peanuts of our region and the laboratory of mass rearing of parasitoids for biocontrol of the sugarcane borer; and plan the next steps of the ongoing researches and ideas of future studies.It is important to highlight in the present proposal the multidisciplinary nature of the studies we have been conducting together, as well as the course we have proposed. The studies have investigated the induced resistance in soybean genotypes following herbivory by lepidopteran larvae on feeding and development of larvae of the same species, quantification of activities of antioxidative enzymes and concentration of flavonoids, and factors influencing expression of resistance in soybeans. In addition to the partnership of Prof. Michael J. Stout, these studies have collaboration of Prof. Dr. Moacir Rossi Forim, from the Department of Chemistry of the Federal University of São Carlos (Universidade Federal de São Carlos), UFSCar, who works in Chemical Ecology and is responsible for analyzing flavonoids in the soybeans, and Profa. Dra. Durvalina Maria Mathias dos Santos, from the Department of Biology Applied to Agriculture of FCAV/UNESP, who works in Plant Stress Physiology and has assisted us in the analysis of antioxidative enzymes. Our proposed course of Special Topics will have the participation of both professors, and will approach topics related with Agricultural Entomology, Plant Physiology, Chemistry, and Genetics. (AU)