Modern agriculture is expected to provide ever-increasing amounts of food and feed under uncertain climate scenarios and significant pressure from consumers and regulators for environmentally friendly solutions to combat abiotic and biotic stress associated yield losses. Biostimulants that can improve crop productivity in a sustainable way offer a plausible alternative to the heavily criticized synthetic agrochemicals. To achieve their full potential a science-based understanding of their beneficial effects and avenues for fine-tuning of their bioactivities are of utmost importance. The proposed project will bring together expertise in plant systems biology, chemical biology, as well as biostimulant preparation and characterization, to discover new and optimize existing biostimulants by tapping into innovative sources of natural compounds and integrative biology approaches for elucidating molecular mechanisms underlying stress priming. A global network of leading plant scientists in abiotic and biotic stress signaling from Europe, Africa, and South America, facilitated by an industrial partner specializing in biostimulants production and marketing, will channel their efforts to bring sustainable solutions for crop protection to the farmer. An extensive mobility program will facilitate optimal knowledge-sharing within the network, maximize the research outputs and ultimately lead to increasing the human capacity of the partners.

Prolonged drought due to climate change has a severe impact on agriculture, requiring measures to secure yield stability under water-shortage conditions. This project aims to be a BOOSTER for developing innovative and sustainable strategies to create climate resilient and drought tolerant cereals. Two synergistic strategies will be implemented to achieve this goal. Firstly, a new approach will identify genomic variants in regulatory regions functionally associated with drought tolerance. Novel regulatory elements underlying resilience will inform efficient breeding efforts to create new drought tolerant cereal varieties. Secondly, novel seaweed extracts and microbial biostimulants will be developed as an eco-friendly approach for improving drought resilience. The two strategies will be tested in two cereals with different responsiveness to drought: European maize and Ethiopian teff, a cereal with high genetic similarity to the desiccation tolerant Eragrostis nindensis. BOOSTER will improve drought tolerance in both maize and teff, while simultaneously exploring the potential for transferring species-specific drought responsive features. By exploiting natural genetic variation to achieve drought tolerant genotypes and by developing biostimulants derived from living organisms, BOOSTER will take advantage of the already available natural resources to steer our agriculture towards novel drought tolerant varieties. Importantly, BOOSTER approaches and results are transferable to other crops. A tailored communication/dissemination strategy and a stakeholders’ engagement plan will ensure the expected outcomes and impacts. The project will produce increased maize- and teff-derived biomass resources under harsh drought conditions, will lower irrigation requirement, will strengthen competitiveness of European and African agri-food industry, and will provide concrete examples for improving public awareness about a sustainable use of bio-based technologies.