Research Projects

Global warming, and thereby intense drought conditions are the principal driver of a 9-10% drop in global cereal productivity. In this context, a deeper understanding and application of natural drought-resistant microbial candidates will uncover a new farmer-friendly strategy for sustaining agriculture in drought-prone areas. Sorghum is globally acknowledged as a climate-resilient cereal crop. Eventually, several studies with this plant were undertaken, with the primary focus being on the physiological adaptation approach for drought tolerance capacity, while few system-level microbiological investigations also revealed & characterized drought tolerant bacterial community dynamics mainly from rhizosphere. Notably, Xu et al. (2018) first investigated the dynamics of the sorghum-root-microbiome under drought circumstances, revealing the involvement of monoderm bacteria in plant developmental responses. In contrast, aerial-microbiome analysis and their subsequent role in response to drought have never been properly investigated. In this context, my major questions are: How do the bacterial communities in the aerial endosphere differ from those in the endo-root microbiota? How do aerial endophytes engineer plant microbiota during drought stress by selectively enriching drought-tolerant bacteria, and what uncharted molecular mechanisms and universal trade-offs enable this adaptation strategy? Are their drought-resistant properties remain consistent when treated to drought-prone crops from diverse taxonomic groups? Our overarching hypothesis is that sorghum may well serve as a hidden treasure for the study of drought-resistant microbiome. Presumably, Sorghum's aerial microbiome enhances the ability of the plant to withstand both drought and heat by meticulous management of sunlight exposure and water utilization. While relatively, little research has been done on sorghum-rhizobacterial-endophytes; knowledge regarding the above-ground endosphere-microbiome in this plant is almost lacking. This microbiome has to be better understood because it may hold the key to identifying and transferring beneficial microbiota from seed to seedling, which could lead to improved drought resilience in the long run. In this endeavor, we will attempt to explore the entire bacterial community dynamics from the aerial endosphere region using meta-omics based approach. Following that, we will isolate & characterize potential endophytic bacterial candidates having desired traits. Subsequently, we will sequence the genome of those isolates and will identify the genetic determinant underlying the drought-resistant mechanism. Then, we will perform knock-out mutations of relevant genes and functional proteomics study in stressed conditions to delineate their proper function. Finally bio-priming will be done for drought susceptible indigenous crop varieties with newly characterized candidates and further observe the phenotypic manifestation on plant developmental response.