Global Meteorological Simulator (GMS): For plant health and disease

作物病虫害和全球传粉媒介减少都对农业生产力和世界粮食安全构成重大威胁。因此，科学界面临的、政府、工业、环境和消费者团体提出的关键问题之一是“如何可持续地保护植物健康？”植物具有复杂的感知和适应环境变化的机制，它们与病原体、害虫和传粉媒介的相互作用受到天气和气候的严重影响。例如，水叶相互作用的生物物理特性影响飞溅分散的真菌病原体的传播，风和雨塑造了农药抗性的适应性成本，传粉者的成功取决于花的湿度。我们已经确定了英国在开展植物健康和疾病研究方面的能力差距，这一差距介于目前的受控环境技术组合和大型实地研究之间。广泛使用的植物生长室不能准确地捕捉或控制风、雨和雾等天气条件。相比之下，野外研究面临着控制和复制的挑战，这对植物研究至关重要。经过与世界领先的植物研究定制控制环境的设计师和供应商的详细讨论，我们建议购买一个独特的定制全球气象模拟器（GMS），它有可能从根本上改变我们在bbsrc面临的广泛研究范围内的研究方法。GMS将能够控制温度、光线、湿度和二氧化碳，并将提供降雨、雾和风控制的新功能。该设计将最大限度地增加可同时进行的重复实验的数量，同时保持大规模的实验能力。GMS汇集了一个性别平衡的研究团队，他们来自广泛的学科，包括生物科学、数学、医学院和心理学，涵盖所有职业阶段。这些研究项目将利用该团队在植物生理学、微生物学、应用昆虫学、神经行为学、计算生物学和数学建模方面的专业知识，解决环境和气候变化如何影响的重要挑战。作物病害流行病学、传播、毒力和抗菌素抗性2。植物的生长发育和植物与病原体的相互作用昼夜节律和藻类集体运动。植物-害虫相互作用和农药抗性动态。植物与传粉者的相互作用、多感官行为和传粉者的空间学习。这将为植物健康领域的突破性发现创造潜力。此外，GMS将促进和扩大埃克塞特大学和西南地区之间的跨学科合作，更重要的是，与我们的工业伙伴之间的合作。

Crop diseases, pests and global pollinator decline all pose a major threat to agricultural productivity and world food security. Thus, one of the key questions facing the scientific community and posed by government, industry, environmental and consumer bodies is "How can plant health be sustainably protected?"Plants have sophisticated mechanisms for sensing and adapting to changing environments and their interactions with pathogens, pests and pollinators are critically impacted by weather and climate. For example, the biophysical properties of water-leaf interactions impact the transmission of splash-dispersed fungal pathogens, wind and rain shape the fitness costs of pesticide resistance and pollinator success depends on floral humidity. We have identified a gap in the UK's capability to carry out research into plant health and disease that sits somewhere between the current portfolio of controlled environmental technologies and large field studies. The widely used plant growth chambers cannot accurately capture or control weather conditions like wind, rain and fog. By contrast, field studies face challenges with control and replication which is important for plant research. As a result of detailed discussions with a world leading designer and supplier of customised, controlled environments for plant research we propose to purchase a unique custom-built Global Meteorological Simulator (GMS) that has the potential to fundamentally change our approach to research across a wide BBSRC-facing remit. The GMS will enable the control of temperature, light, humidity and CO2, and will provide the novel features of rainfall, fog and wind control. The design will maximise the number of replicate experiments that can be carried out concurrently whilst maintaining large-scale experimental capability. The GMS brings together a gender-balanced team of investigators from a wide range of disciplines that includes Biosciences, Mathematics, the Medical School and Psychology and that span all career stages. The research projects will utilise the team's expertise in plant physiology, microbiology, applied entomology, neuroethology, computational biology and mathematical modelling to address important challenges of how environment and climate change affect:1. Crop disease epidemiology, transmission, virulence and antimicrobial resistance2. Plant growth, development and plant-pathogen interactions3. Circadian rhythms and collective algal movement4. Plant-pest interactions and pesticide resistance dynamics5. Plant-pollinator interactions, multisensory behaviour and the spatial learning of pollinators.This will create potential for ground-breaking discoveries for plant heath. Moreover, the GMS will promote and expand interdisciplinary collaborations across the University of Exeter, the South-West region and importantly, with our industrial partners.