An international research team is embarking on a three-year project to investigate how plants respond to the combined stresses of heat and pathogens. The team includes Professor Gail Preston of the University of Oxford in England and Professor Thomas Lahaye of the Eberhard-Karls University of Tuebingen in Germany, who will be working alongside Leisner and Potnis.

The project is backed by $2.4 million in funding from multiple agencies. Potnis and Leisner will receive $800,000 from the National science Foundation. Preston’s funding is provided by the UK Research and Innovation Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, while Lahaye’s comes from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, a German research foundation.

“This is actually a unique grant because the initial funding call was for a tri-national grant opportunity that was specific to the united States, Germany, and the United Kingdom,” said Leisner, an affiliate with the global Change Center. “The lead country was the United Kingdom, and they were very interested in basic and applied research in model species as well as in agriculture.”

Leisner and Potnis have previously collaborated on three papers examining plant responses to combined stress, specifically how pepper plants react to Xanthomonas infection and simultaneous exposure to elevated ozone levels. While they haven’t worked with their European colleagues before, they are partnering to broaden their research into plant responses to stress and disease.

xanthomonas, also known as bacterial spot, can infect nearly 400 plant species, including rice, citrus, cabbage, pepper, tomatoes, and beans, according to Leisner. The pathogen has no known cure and can decimate entire crop yields.

As part of this project, bell pepper plants will be grown in Alabama, where Potnis will investigate the environmental factors influencing pathogen dynamics within the plant. Simultaneously, Leisner will assess the physical, chemical, and biological changes resulting from heat stress.

European Research on plant Stress

“Understanding the molecular basis of how temperature affects pathogen virulence, and the functionality of plant immunity should, in the long term, enable us to engineer crops with thermotolerant pest resistance.”

In Europe, the researchers will utilize growth chambers to precisely control the growing environment. In the UK, Preston will study how Xanthomonas responds to heat stress, while in Germany, Lahaye will examine the response of the plant’s resistance genes to both heat stress and the pathogen.