Developing synthetic microbial communities for the control of pea downy mildew

About the Project

Demand for food production is increasing due to growing global population, reduced land availability for agriculture, concern over the effects of the environment on agriculture, and decreasing yield reliability because of climate change. We need to rise to this challenge and provide solutions to grow enough food in a sustainable way. Legumes including peas and broad beans and other protein crops have gone through a revival and demand has been increasing steadily.

However, these pulse crops suffer heavily from the downy mildew pathogen Peronospora viciae f.sp. pisi (PVP). Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) approaches on soil and phyllosphere microbes have led to an explosion of information regarding plant associated microbiomes. Although this type of work has been predominantly sequence-based and often descriptive in nature, increasingly it is moving towards microbiome functionality. The synthetic microbial communities (SynCom) approach is an emerging technique that involves co-culturing multiple taxa under well-defined conditions to mimic the structure and function of a microbiome.

Our aim and objectives are:

We aim to reduce downy mildew disease with artificially constructed beneficial microbial communities. Specifically, we will identify microbial communities on the phyllosphere part of pea plants, determine if the microbial community enhances yield and quality of the crop, examine if synthetic fungicides can be replaced by beneficial microorganisms and develop a beneficial microbial mixture specific to pea plants. In the short term (2-3 years), commercial pea growers, breeders and pea seed producers will be able to benefit from the outcome of the research proposed here.

1. Identify microbiomes in phyllosphere of pea and investigate how PVP interacts with the microbial community using shotgun 16 s and ITS metagenomics/whole genome sequencing approaches.
2. Determine whether phyllosphere microbiomes enhance crop performance in terms of differences in disease symptomsin the absence and presence of infective pathogen.
3. Examine the interaction between synthetic fungicide and addition of ‘beneficial microorganism’ to phyllosphere and PVP.
4. Develop a pea specific novel beneficial microbial mixture.

We anticipate through this work, microbial communities on pea plants will be identified before and after pesticide application; interaction between PVP and other microbial community identified; effect of fungicides on pathogenic, commensal and beneficiary microbes determined; role and performance of microbiomes in phyllosphere of pea determined; and a method that will help to identify crop specific mixture of beneficial microbes established.

Research Group: Molecular Plant and Microbial Biosciences Research Unit (MPMB-RU)

Application Process

To begin the application process please go to https://www.worc.ac.uk/research/research-degrees/applying-for-a-phd/.

The Interview

All successful applicants will be offered an interview with the proposed Supervisory Team. You will be contacted by a member of the Doctoral School Team to find a suitable date. Interviews can be conducted in person or over Microsoft Teams.

Funding your PhD

For information about Doctoral Loans please visit: https://www.worc.ac.uk/study/fees-and-finance/doctoral-loans.aspx

During your PhD you can access the Research Conference Support Scheme to support the costs of presenting your research at an external conference.