Tuesday, July 14, 2020
3:00 – 4:00 p.m.
On Zoom
S Square is excited to invite you to the fourth episode of the Sustainability Seminars Series on June 14, 2020 entitled a “Microbial Revolution in the Future of Crops.” This series is a platform for raising scientific engagement on the complexity of sustainability.
Abstract
In the sixties, the Green Revolution dramatically increased food production by breeding crop varieties that could fully take advantage of new fertilizers, while powerful pesticides and herbicides protected them from different threats. Despite this success, we are well aware that today’s intensive agriculture has originated distinct environmental impacts. These include soil erosion, water pollution, exhaustion of micronutrients and biodiversity decline, while unable to counteract the release of greenhouse gases suggested to be involved in global changes. With the constant increase of the global population, the up-coming challenge requires a new agricultural revolution to produce even more food for the expected 9 billion people in 2050. However, futures strategies must diverge from the ones of the former Green Revolution, which is no more environmentally sustainable.
The development of next generation sequencing platforms has revealed the importance of the microbial world. Thanks to them, our knowledge has made giant leaps revealing how microbes have remarkable effects on many aspects of our life – from the environment in which we live to our body. The concept of the human microbiota as our second genome has indeed represented a paradigm shift for the current biomedical studies. On the plant side, microbial communities are the plant microbiota. They have been revealed to play important roles in plant development and survival, pushing them at the forefront of society requests in agriculture. Therefore, the relationships between plant microbiota and plant productivity have to be better exploited, since microbes can provide some of the innovative changes on the way we grow crops for food, and to develop a more sustainable agriculture in an endangered environment.
Rhizobia, Plant Growth Promoting Bacteria and Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi provide excellent examples of natural microbes, which can be at the basis of a more sustainable agriculture. Exciting novel projects illustrate how science and research are required to design future plants which can take the best advantages from beneficial microbes.
About the speaker
Paola Bonfane is Professor Emerita in the Department of Life Science and Systems Biology, University of Torino, Italy. She is a highly cited researcher in the biology of plant-microorganism Interactions: their impact on environmental and agricultural sustainability. Professor Paola is named a world expert in Mycorrhizae and top Italian scientists, ranking 3 for the typology Natural sciences.
To name a few, professor Paola served as a member of the Scientific Committee for Research Activities-Provincia diTrento from 2014-2019 and as a member of the Scientific Committee of CNR (2012-2016). Professor Paola also served as an editor to several academic journals such as Environmental Microbiology and Microorganisms and as evaluator for scientific agencies such as European and American Science Foundation (NSF) and Finnish Academy. She is Fellow of Academy of Sciences of Torino (2000), Academy of Agriculture of Torino (2000); Accademia dei Lincei Roma (November 2011), Académie d’Agriculture de France, Paris (2018), Accademia Europea, MAE (2019).
Should you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at s.square@kaust.edu.sa.