GENOMITE: New generation sustainable tools to control emerging mite pests under climate change

FACCE JPI ERA NET+ project

 Project kick-off meeting - Friday 10 October 9:00 -15:30, Ibiza

PROGRAMME 

09:00 FACCE JPI ERA NET + and project Mission (J Cross, M Grbic) 

09:15 Project management (technical and financial) (J Cross) Obligations/Expectations of FACCE JPI and National Authorities, Governance structureCollaboration agreement, Mailing list 

10:00 Review of workpackages 15 minutes presentation by WP leader + ½ hour discussion for each WP) WP4. Identification of mite elicitors/effectors and their activities. WP leader: Thomas van Leeuwen, UvA 

10:45 Break 11:15  Review of workpackages  (continued) WP1: Species distribution models and tritrophic interactions under CC scenarios in Europe. WP leader: Maria Navajas, INRA

WP2: Reciprocal transcriptional responses of mites and plants under CC. WP leader: Isabel Diaz, UPM 12:45 Lunch 

13:45 Review of workpackages (continued) WP3. Identification of plant and mite metabolites upon herbivory and CC. WP leader: Lothar Willmitzer, MPI

WP5. Systems biology: Correlation of plant transcriptomics and metabolomic responses with tritrophic performance and mite transcriptome responses. WP leader: Yves van de Peer, VIB. 15:15 AOB 15:30 End

What is FACCE-JPI?The Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE-JPI) brings together 21 countries who are committed to building an integrated European Research Area addressing the interconnected challenges of sustainable agriculture, food security and impacts of climate change.

5 core research themes:1• Sustainable food security under climate change, based on an integrated food systems perspective: modelling, benchmarking and policy research perspective2• Environmentally sustainable growth and intensification of agricultural systems3• Assessing and reducing trade-offs between food production, biodiversity and ecosystem services4• Adaptation to climate change throughout the whole food chain5• Greenhouse gas mitigation

www.faccejpi.com

The ERA-NET Scheme(European Research Area-Network)Coordination of national and regional research programmes through two specific actions:

■'ERA-NET actions' - providing a framework for actors implementing public research programmes to coordinate their activities e.g. by developing joint activities or by mutually supporting joint calls for trans-national proposals.■'ERA-NET Plus actions'- providing, in a limited number of cases with high European added value, additional EU financial support to facilitate joint calls for proposals between national and/or regional programmes. Commission supports joint calls by “topping-up” joint trans-national funding with Community funding.

Under the ERA-NET scheme, national and regional authorities identify research programmes they wish to coordinate or open up mutually. The participants in these actions are therefore programme 'owners' (typically ministries or regional authorities defining research programmes) or programme 'managers' (such as research councils or other research funding agencies managing research programmes).

GENOMITE mission statement

Climate  change  will  have  serious  and  profound  impacts  on  pests  and  diseases  of  agricultural crops in Europe and it is vital that new tools and management methods are developed to tackle the problems that will increasingly threaten EU food production as a result.

In this project, for the first time, comprehensive state-of-the-art genomic, metabolomic and modelling methods will be used to develop the necessary tools and management methods for  tackling  spider  mites  that  are  increasingly  serious  pests  of  many  important  crops throughout the EU.

This will not only be an outstanding contribution to spider mite management under climate change  but  crucially  be  an  example,  demonstrating  how  the  best  and  most  advanced methods  can  be  applied  to  the  vast  array  of  other  important  pests  and  diseases  that  will develop because of climate change.

SPIDER MITES Spider  mite  outbreaks  and  crop  damage  are  strongly  favoured  by  high  temperatures  and 

drought stress caused by climate change (especially in combination) that will have a serious impact  not  only  in  southern  Europe  and  the  Mediterranean  basin  but  also  throughout Europe because of more extreme weather events including heat waves and droughts.

The  two-spotted  spider  mite,  Tetranychus urticae (TSSM),  is  a  highly  polyphagous  species which attacks many  crops and  is  adapting  to attack  several  important new crops  including grape vines and corn. Tetranychus evansi (TE) is a recently arrived alien invasive pest that is spreading  through  Europe  and  attacks  important  solanacious  crops  including  tomato  and potato.

PREDATORY MITES Phytoseiid  predatory  mites  are  the  main  naturally  occurring  predators  that  help  regulate 

spider mite populations and are introduced as biocontrol agents for control of spider mites in commercial crops.

They  are  sensitive  to  broad-spectrum  insecticides  and  the  increasing  use  of  these insecticides  to  control  other  alien  invasive  pests,  e.g.  spotted  wing  Drosophila  and  brown marmorated  stink  bug,  are  harming  them  and  causing  more  serious  outbreaks  of  spider mites.

• In this project, teams from 7 EU countries and Canada will model the performance of each organism in plant-spider mite-predators tritrophic interaction under changing climatic (CC) conditions.

• This will be accompanied by determination of reciprocal transcriptional and metabolomics changes in plants (tomato and strawberry) and spider mites (TSSM and TE) upon their interactions under normal and CC scenarios.

• In addition, we will search for elicitors and effectors of TSSM and TE that are capable of modulating plant defences.

• Using Systems biology approaches, we will link performance of plants and mites with genome-wide changes in their responses.

• Thus, our study will not only model performance of organisms involve in tritrophic interaction, but will also model processes whose changes lead to modulated performance under CC.

• This comprehensive knowledge can then be used  to develop new tools and methods for climate-smart pest control

Project obligations (Expectations of FACCE/National authorities)

Start and end dates: 3 year project. Must end by 31 December 2017. Therefore start 1 January 2015

Scientific reporting: Annual reports to the secretariat based at Projektträger Jülich, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Germany submitted by the project coordinator no later than 3 months after the 1st, 2nd and 3rd year from the start of the grant.

Financial reporting: National authority requirements. For UK (BBSRC), EMR have to complete and return a finance expenditure statement within 3 months of the end date of a research grant, and annual interim reports

Dissemination: Grant holders will be required to attend the ERANET+ dissemination events. It is a requirement to provide project material to the ERANET+ call secretariat to appear on the FACCE-JPI website. Grant holders must acknowledge FACCE ERANET+ and national authorities in their publications and any other means of dissemination of the project results.

Data Management: Comply with national authority Data Sharing and Open Access policies.

Collaboration agreement: A collaboration agreement between all project partners is required. For UK, must be in place no later than 6 months after the start of the project. For France, before project starts? A notification that the collaboration agreement is in place and has been signed must be submitted by the coordinator to the call office. DESCA Horizon 2020 model consortium agreement provided

Governance structure (section 6)

General assembly (the decision-making body of the consortium)• Chaired by consortium coordinator (Jerry) and project scientific leader (Mike)• One representative of each party (can appoint substitute or proxy)INRA (Maria), MPI (Lothar), CUT (Menelaos), UvA (Thomas), VIB UoG (Yves/Stephane), UPM (Isabel), CSIC (Pedro), UWA (Mike/Vava), EMR (Richard)• Properly run meeting with agenda and minutes etc• Meet face to face annually

Management support team (= ‘Steering Committee’) (appointed by general assembly)• Chaired by project leader (J Cross) and project scientific leader (Mike)• WP leaders to report on progress in their WPWP1 (Maria), WP2 (Isabel), WP3 (Lothar), WP4 (Thomas), WP5 (Yves/Stephane)• Meet by Skype or ‘phone conference call quarterly etc• Properly run meeting with agenda and minutes

Scientific advisory board• Who?• Modus operandi?

Finalise collaboration agreement

Section 6a) Do we want to use the management support team optionb) Do any of the consortium have identified affiliated entities they need registeringc) Will the External Expert Advisory Board be formed

Section 8There are two options and we should decide which to opt for

8.4 we need to decide if that clause is needed.

9.4 and 9.6 consortium should be consulted

11.8 we need to decide which option

Next steps

1. Jerry to finalise the collaboration agreement and send to all parties for signature

2. Consortium partners to get collaboration agreement singed by correct authority and return .pdf of signature page to J CrossINRA (Maria), MPI (Lothar), CUT (Menelaos), UvA (Thomas), VIB UoG (Yves), UPM (Isabel), CSIC (Pedro), UWA (Mike/Vava)

3. Finalise start date (1 Jan 2015) with national authorities

4. WP leaders to manage their WP!

5. Agee programme of Management Support Team meetings

6. Agree General Assembly meetings

QUARTER (3 months) Q1 Q 2 Q 3 Q 4 Q 5 Q 6 Q 7 Q 8 Q 9 Q10 Q11 Q12

WP1: Species distribution models and tritrophic interactions under CC scenarios in Europe

Task 1.1. Recording occurrences of pests and predators in the EU

Task 1.2. Mites-plant interactions under varying climatic conditions

Task 1.3. Assessing demographic parameters and dispersion of mite pests and predators under climate change conditions

Task 1.4. Predation capacity of predators and tritrophic interactions under simulated climate change conditions

Task 1.5. Predicting distributions of mites and effectiveness of predator control under CC

Task 1.6. Field validating the pest-natural enemy distribution model and effectiveness of biological control

WP2: Reciprocal transcriptional responses of mites and plants under CC

Task 2.1. Preparation of tomato and mite (TSSM and TE) samples under varying CC

Task 2.2. Identification of tomato DEGs upon mite herbivory under varying CC

Task 2.3. Preparation of strawberry and mite (TSSM) samples under varying CC

Task 2.4. Identification of strawberry DEGs upon mite herbivory under varying CC

Task 2.5. Identification of mite responses upon feeding on tomato and strawberries under varying CC

WP3: Identification of plant and mite metabolites upon herbivory and CC

Task 3.1 Analysis of tomato metabolites upon mite herbivory under varying CC

Task 3.2. Identification of metabolites and lipids associated with differential response in tomato to mite infection under cc and control conditions

Task 3.3: Analysis of strawberry metabolites upon mite herbivory under varying CC

Task 3.4. Identification of metabolites and lipids associated with differential response in strawberry to mite infection under cc and control conditions

Task 3.5: Mite metabolomics/lipidomic responses upon feeding on tomato and strawberries under varying CC

Task 3.6. Identification of TSSM and TE responses upon feeding on tomato plants under varying CC

Task 3.7: Identification of TSSM responses upon feeding on strawberry under varying CC

WP4: Identification of mite elicitors/effectors and their activities

Task 4.1: Detection of proteins and peptides in saliva of spider mites by using HPLC - MS

Task 4.2: Sequencing the transcriptome of TSSM and TE heads

Task 4.3: Validation of the putative salivary secretome

Task 4.4: Test interactions of putative effectors with plant immunity or physiology through infiltration of peptides or transient expression of effectors in model plants

Task 4.5: Identification of candidate transcription factors (TFs) responsible for reprograming/suppression of induced defense response

WP5: Systems biology: Correlation of plant transcriptomics and metabolomic responses with tritrophic performance and mite transcriptome responses

Task 5.1.1: Establish reference transcriptome for strawberry

Task 5.1.2: Perform DEG analysis from strawberry RNAseq.

Task 5.1.3: Overlay Tomato micro-array and strawberry RNAseq expression compendia.

Task 5.2: Prepare a framework for transcriptome and metabolome data integration.

Task 5.3: Populate pathway databases for the plant side as well as for the mite side.

Task 5.4: Build an orthologous gene-set between Tomato and Strawberry.

Task 5.5: Integration of metabolomics and transcriptomic data via multivariate statistics