UNTWIST - Uncover and promote tolerance to temperature and water stress in Camelina sativa

• Climatic variability and extreme weather events are increasingly impacting crop yield and value. To maintain good yield performance under the predicted climate extremes, improvements in yield stability can only come from a greater understanding of the genetic interplay and plasticity of plant adaptation.
• To reveal successful stress adaptation strategies, which can be exploited for increasing yield stability in adverse and changing environmental conditions, the UNTWIST project uses the old, naturally climate-resilient, and native European oilseed crop Camelina sativa (gold-of-pleasure), which has not yet undergone intensive breeding. The interdisciplinary UNTWIST consortium investigates the multi-layered responses of a collection of genetically diverse camelina genotypes to drought and heat stress in an in-depth systems-based approach. (Epi)genomic, physiological, metabolic, proteomic, and transcriptional data from controlled glass-house experiments under limited water availability and elevated temperature conditions are combined with agronomical data from field trials in four different countries.
• Analysis of the UNTWIST core collection, consisting of cultivars, breeding lines, and landraces, not only demonstrates the significant plasticity but also that the expression of this plasticity varies with different lines, providing a resource from which multiple mechanisms for stress tolerance can be identified and potentially translated into other oilseed crops.
• Data are used to develop mechanistic and predictive models as well as robust markers for crop performance for variable environments. Moreover, the new knowledge is translated into crop improvement and optimized management strategies.

Keywords: Stress adaptation mechanisms, climate change, heat, drought, oilseed crop

Acknowledgements: This work has received funding from the European Union´s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Grant Agreement No 8625241.
https://www.untwist.eu; https://twitter.com/UNTWIST_H2020; https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/862524/de