Interdisciplinary network for the integration of resistance and resilience to stress in perennial plants (RESI3)

Global change leads to increased climate variability and exposure to extreme weather events, which affect perennial plants several times throughout their lives. Changes in the reproduction and propagation potential of pathogens could also lead to an increase in epidemics. Maintaining perennial vegetation is crucial to the functioning of natural and man-made ecosystems, as it helps mitigate global change through significant effects on the carbon and water cycles.

Resistance and resilience to stressors are controlled by integrated biological processes on different spatial and temporal scales. Taking into account initial effects (i.e. stress response), delayed effects (i.e. stress memory) and resilience to stressful events is a major scientific challenge that requires an integrative biology approach. The response to multiple stresses is different from the response to an individual source of stress: for example, exposure to abiotic stress can reduce or increase sensitivity to biotic agents, and vice versa.

The aim of this project is to create a network of specialists in these areas, approached from different disciplinary angles or through the prism of their field of study (tree, vine, grass/grassland, etc.). An integrated, multifactorial approach, which focuses on resistance to both biotic and abiotic constraints, will make it possible to link (epi-)genetics, genomics, (eco-)physiology and pathology, and to share resources on plant functioning. The characterisation and dissemination of protocols for measuring relevant traits, their heritability and plasticity will enable resistance and resilience processes and their variability to be integrated into mechanistically-based models. Their use in simulation will lead to the assessment of the effect of integrating these traits of interest on key climate change mitigation processes (carbon storage, water resource management, temperature), and to the proposal of ideotype selection and management scenarios for mitigating the impact of global change on essential biological functions.