USAMV Cluj-Napoca, part of an international project that has resulted in more developed and drought-tolerant roots in sunflowers

A team of researchers and students from the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine (USAMV) Cluj-Napoca, in collaboration with specialists from Belgium, Germany and Poland, has successfully completed a project that has resulted in more developed and drought-tolerant roots in sunflowers.

The initiators and coordinators of the project were researchers from Belgium, and the team of our university also included students from Agricultural Biotechnologies (Faculty of Animal Husbandry and Biotechnologies), who learnt about the stages of the technology used, and two of them opted for further studies and the completion of their bachelor theses on this topic.

“Sunflower is a species where this kind of experiment is difficult to apply, because sunflower is very difficult to grow in the laboratory. However, starting from an existing method, established in the USA by Parks and Yordanov in 2020, we have optimised and brought this modified rhizobia-mediated induction system to a high level. These rhizobia had very good growth capacity, so they grew two to three times better than normal rhizobia. What’s more, these rootstocks are fully functional, with the plants growing and fruiting very well. The results are very encouraging for further studies. Plant biotechnology could make a contribution to improving sunflower for drought tolerance. The results of the current project suggest a way to improve the gene pool of sunflowers in this respect”, explained CS Dr Adriana Aurori, project coordinator from USAMV Cluj-Napoca.

The study was carried out on sunflowers for the first time in Romania, and the researchers involved in the project are optimistic about the applicability of the results to these crops.

“Much more work is needed to apply our method in agriculture. It also takes time to incorporate it into a breeding programme, because you need to get plants that have this new genetic information integrated at seed level, not just at root level. However, we are optimistic and believe that we are on the right track to be able to practically exploit the results of our current research in the near future,” said Adriana Aurori.

The international ERA-NET project SusCrop – “Development of a new breeding technology for improved root system, drought tolerance and sustainable plant production” aimed to take a different approach to plant breeding for more sustainable crop production by using Ri technology, which is based on a non-GMO method of plant transformation using the bacterium Rhizobium rhizogenes.

“These bacteria live in the soil and naturally transfer some of their genetic material into the plant cell. The cells thus benefit from new genetic information that acts as a signal for the production of new roots. By cultivating these special roots in the laboratory and using rather complex methods, we can obtain whole plants which, on the basis of this new integrated genetic information, will, in turn have more developed roots, a very advantageous trait for sunflowers”, said the USAMV Cluj-Napoca researcher.

Specialists in the project draw attention to the fact that, due to climate change, farmers’ activity has become very risky. The Romanian sunflower crop has been devastated over very large areas in the last three years, and the compensation funds do not replace the income generated by a prosperous crop, but only cover the losses. Systematic irrigation during periods of drought could be a viable solution, but it is costly and difficult to implement. Access to drought-tolerant sunflower hybrids could also reduce crop losses. However, these are not easy to obtain, as the gene pool of sunflowers is quite small. Therefore, there is a need for a source of genetic variability that will create the chance to obtain new plant traits and increase the plants’ chances of adapting to the current, increasingly unfavourable climatic conditions.

The ERA-NET project, which will run from 2021-2024, has received national funding of €200,000 from the Executive Unit for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation (UEFISCDI). The results of this project were presented at a workshop hosted by the Transylvanian Institute for Advanced Horticultural Research of the USAMV Cluj-Napoca, and the members of the research teams want all the information to reach mainly farmers in Romania.

The USAMV Cluj-Napoca team in this project: prof. dr. eng. Rodica Pop, Assoc prof. dr. eng. Cristian Radu Sisea, CS dr. Adriana Carolina Aurori; PhD. Mihaiela Cornea-Cipcigan; student volunteers Raluca-Dumitrița Lazǎr, Mihai Ilieș.