Old but gold: exploiting the underutilized oilseed crop Camelina sativa to uncover and promote tolerance to abiotic stress for improving climate resilience

The old European oilseed camelina (gold-of-pleasure) is receiving attention because of its inherent tolerance to abiotic stress and capacity for genetic improvement. To uncover its stress adaptation strategies, the UNTWIST project (H2020; GA 862524) uses a systems approach to dissect camelina´s responses to heat and drought by evaluating 54 genetically diverse camelina lines in field trials and controlled stress environments. Genomics and metabolomics enabled the selection of four contrasting lines for characterisation in additional field trials and controlled large-scale stress experiments. A drought experiment in an automated phenotyping setup will be presented, which revealed the differential responses of the lines under control and stress conditions at multiple levels. Integration of the results with complementary omics data (e.g., metabolome, transcriptome) is supporting the development of mechanistic models and identification of markers for the improvement of climate-smart crops