Novel holobiont-based approaches to rapidly adapt wheat to drought stress

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Global climatic change will not only result in higher mean temperature, but also to changes in precipitationregimes. In Canada, this will be particularly important in the Prairies, the major contributing region toCanadian agriculture. This will lead to reduced yields in many major crops, including wheat. Although wheatbreeding could improve resistance and resilience to drought stress, the rapidity and the scale of climate changeis calling for innovative biotechnological methods for that task. Fortunately, there have been conceptual andtechnological advances in recent years that now allows devising novel strategies to help wheat rapidly adapt todrier conditions. These strategies take advantage of the intimate interactions between the wheat and itsmicrobiota (collectively termed the holobiont). The proposed project is divided in two complementary parts: 1)understanding the effects of drought on the holobiont, 2) manipulating holobionts to better resist drought stress.By better understanding the entirety of the interactions occurring within this holobiont, we expect to be able todevise novel strategies to adapt wheat plants to stressful conditions. Such strategies involve optimizing themicrobial part of the holobiont, pre-adapting the holobiont to stressful conditions and directing holobiontevolution toward desired highly resilient states. These strategies are thought to be achievable within a single ora few generations, providing direly needed solutions to upcoming precipitation imbalance issues, andpotentially cancelling predicted crop yield losses.