Employing the natural genetic variation to improve nutritional properties and stress tolerance in vegetable crops

Yield and nutritional properties of vegetable crops are affected by unfavorable environmental conditions, such as drought, salinity, extreme temperatures, and pollutants. This project aims at improving stress tolerance of major vegetable crops and design new strategies for maintaining higher yields and food quality even during unfavorable weather conditions. One of the major research directions is exploring the wide genetic and phenotypic variations of fleshy (tomato, pepper) and leafy (lettuce) vegetables to improve agronomical traits under abiotic stresses (e.g. drought, salinity, and extreme temperatures). We will employ a suite of genetics and genomics approaches, such as GWAS in combination with QTL, to identify genes contributing to high yield and stress tolerance. In another research direction, we will characterize the fruit metabolic compositions in terms of flavor and healthy related compounds to assess the impact of abiotic stress on fruit quality. A wide range of plant phenotypic, and metabolic traits will be evaluated, followed by transcriptomic profiling in two genome-wide association (GWAS) panels and two backcrossed inbred lines (BILs) populations for both tomato and pepper. The identified genes will be subsequently validated by CRISPR-Cas9 editing technologies and field trials. To implement this ambitious work program, a new research department “Crop Quantitative Genetics” will be established in the Center of Plant Systems Biology and Biotechnology (CPSBB) in Plovdiv. The new research department will scale up the applied research on vegetable breeding in CPSBB and the region. Furthermore, the new CPSBB department will link with Bulgarian and international research organizations, companies, and farmer associations in the field of crop science, creating an ecosystem network that is highly attractive to talented researchers and brings the innovations to end users for the benefit of the society.