Every year, pests and diseases destroy up to 30% of the world’s major food crops, costing the global economy $540 billion. This programme investigates the molecular conversations between plants and the microbes and insects that harm or help them, aiming to predictively manipulate plant immunity and harness beneficial microbes for crop protection. This matters because current interventions are failing to keep pace with evolving pathogens and the pressures of climate change. The research targets acute UK agricultural problems—cabbage stem flea beetle, aphids, legume diseases, potato late blight, and cereal rusts—where genetic resistance is urgently needed. It also explores how beneficial microbes supply nitrogen to legumes and help roots withstand drought. If successful, the work could lead to durable disease-resistant crops developed through precision breeding, reducing reliance on chemical pesticides and stabilising food supply chains. The programme is primarily applied, developed with industry and growers to address pressing agricultural needs, but it also advances fundamental understanding of how plant immune receptors recognise pathogens and how microbes colonise plant tissues—knowledge that could underpin future crop protection strategies.
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Feeding the world in a sustainable way, in the face of the climate emergency, represents one of the major challenges for humankind in the 21st Century. Up to 30% of the yield of our major global crops is lost each year to diseases and pests, despite extensive interventions. If we could prevent these losses- which cost the global economy $540 billion p.a. -it would have a major impact on ensuring global food security. The Advancing Plant Health (APH) Institute Strategic Programme (ISP) will investigate the molecular mechanisms that underpin interactions of plants with pathogens and pests, as well as beneficial microbes. We will build upon recent breakthrough discoveries in our understanding of the plant immune system, microbial pathogenesis, insect parasitism and symbiosis, as well as recent advances in structural biology, machine learning, genomics and advanced bioimaging. We aim to predictively manipulate plant immunity so crops can be protected against current and emerging diseases and parasites. We will also harness the potential of beneficial microbes to enhance plant growth, enable plants to acquire fixed nitrogen, and ensure plant health. New knowledge gained will be used to enhance crop resilience and sustainable agricultural productivity in the context of the climate emergency. APH has been developed in consultation with industry, plant breeders and growers, so that it addresses the most pressing needs of agriculture. One focus of APH is to enhance plant immunity to protect crops. Plants have a multi-layered immune system, but pathogens have evolved the ability to evade detection and suppress immunity. We will discover and exploit novel sources of plant disease resistance, focusing on acute problems in UK agriculture such as cabbage stem flea beetle and aphids, as well as legume diseases, where genetic forms of resistance are urgently needed, and major crop diseases such as potato late blight and cereal rusts. In parallel, we aim to determine how plant immune receptors recognise pathogens and activate plant defence, enabling the ability to design new disease resistance genes that can be deployed through precision breeding. We will also aim to understand how pathogens and pests invade and colonise crop plants. We will define developmental and physiological processes in microbial pathogens and insects that allow them to infect plant hosts. We will determine how these functions are genetically regulated and identify the plant proteins targeted by pathogen effector proteins so we can understand how pathogens suppress immunity. We will also investigate the role of other disease susceptibility factors. In parallel, we will investigate beneficial interactions of microbes with plants. It is clear that the microbial community associated with crop plants is critical to their health. Microbes take part in mutualistic symbioses, for example, providing fixed nitrogen to legumes and enhancing the ability of roots to take up nutrients and withstand drought conditions. The diverse mechanisms that enable microbial consolation of plant cells and tissues will be explored, as well as evolutionary relationships. We aim to understand how environmental changes and chemical applications affect microbial populations in the environment and use this knowledge to develop microbial communities that can enhance plant growth in detrimental conditions and confer resistance to disease. Finally, we will deploy this knowledge to facilitate durable disease control. Working with industry and international collaborators we will devise new strategies to combat emerging disease threats, deploying durable combinations of disease resistance genes in potato, rice, wheat, Brassica and pea, for example, working in the UK as well as internationally. When considered together, APH will provide a multi-faceted strategy for sustainably enhancing plant health and crop productivity based on a detailed understanding of plant-microbe/pest interactions.
Jonathan Jones (Co-Investigator)Matthew Moscou (Co-Investigator)Nicholas Talbot (Principal Investigator)Sophien Kamoun (Co-Investigator)Wenbo Ma (Co-Investigator)
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