Transcript Introduction

GENOMITE: New generation sustainable tools to control
emerging mite pests under climate change
FACCE JPI ERA NET+ project
Project kick-off meeting - Friday 10 October 9:00 -15:30, Ibiza
PROGRAMME
09:00 FACCE JPI ERA NET + and project Mission (J Cross, M Grbic)
09:15 Project management (technical and financial) (J Cross)
Obligations/Expectations of FACCE JPI and National Authorities, Governance structure
Collaboration agreement, Mailing list
10:00 Review of workpackages
15 minutes presentation by WP leader + ½ hour discussion for each WP)
WP4. Identification of mite elicitors/effectors and their activities. WP leader: Thomas van Leeuwen, UvA
10:45 Break
11:15 Review of workpackages (continued)
WP1: Species distribution models and tritrophic interactions under CC scenarios in Europe. WP leader: Maria Navajas,
INRA
WP2: Reciprocal transcriptional responses of mites and plants under CC. WP leader: Isabel Diaz, UPM
12:45 Lunch
13:45 Review of workpackages (continued)
WP3. Identification of plant and mite metabolites upon herbivory and CC. WP leader: Lothar Willmitzer, MPI
WP5. Systems biology: Correlation of plant transcriptomics and metabolomic responses with tritrophic performance
and mite transcriptome responses. WP leader: Yves van de Peer, VIB.
15:15 AOB
15:30 End
What is FACCE-JPI?
The Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and
Climate Change (FACCE-JPI) brings together 21 countries who are
committed to building an integrated European Research Area
addressing the interconnected challenges of sustainable agriculture,
food security and impacts of climate change.
5 core research themes:
1• Sustainable food security under climate change, based on an
integrated food systems perspective: modelling, benchmarking and
policy research perspective
2• Environmentally sustainable growth and intensification of
agricultural systems
3• Assessing and reducing trade-offs between food production,
biodiversity and ecosystem services
4• Adaptation to climate change throughout the whole food chain
5• Greenhouse gas mitigation
www.faccejpi.com
The ERA-NET Scheme
(European Research Area-Network)
Coordination of national and regional research programmes through two
specific actions:
■'ERA-NET actions' - providing a framework for actors implementing public
research programmes to coordinate their activities e.g. by developing joint
activities or by mutually supporting joint calls for trans-national proposals.
■'ERA-NET Plus actions'- providing, in a limited number of cases with high
European added value, additional EU financial support to facilitate joint calls
for proposals between national and/or regional programmes. Commission
supports joint calls by “topping-up” joint trans-national funding with
Community funding.
Under the ERA-NET scheme, national and regional authorities identify
research programmes they wish to coordinate or open up mutually. The
participants in these actions are therefore programme 'owners' (typically
ministries or regional authorities defining research programmes) or
programme 'managers' (such as research councils or other research funding
agencies managing research programmes).
GENOMITE mission statement
Climate change will have serious and profound impacts on pests and diseases of agricultural
crops in Europe and it is vital that new tools and management methods are developed to tackle
the problems that will increasingly threaten EU food production as a result.


In this project, for the first time, comprehensive state-of-the-art genomic, metabolomic and
modelling methods will be used to develop the necessary tools and management methods
for tackling spider mites that are increasingly serious pests of many important crops
throughout the EU.
This will not only be an outstanding contribution to spider mite management under climate
change but crucially be an example, demonstrating how the best and most advanced
methods can be applied to the vast array of other important pests and diseases that will
develop because of climate change.
SPIDER MITES
 Spider mite outbreaks and crop damage are strongly favoured by high temperatures and
drought stress caused by climate change (especially in combination) that will have a serious
impact not only in southern Europe and the Mediterranean basin but also throughout
Europe because of more extreme weather events including heat waves and droughts.
 The two-spotted spider mite, Tetranychus urticae (TSSM), is a highly polyphagous species
which attacks many crops and is adapting to attack several important new crops including
grape vines and corn. Tetranychus evansi (TE) is a recently arrived alien invasive pest that is
spreading through Europe and attacks important solanacious crops including tomato and
potato.
PREDATORY MITES
 Phytoseiid predatory mites are the main naturally occurring predators that help regulate
spider mite populations and are introduced as biocontrol agents for control of spider mites
in commercial crops.

They are sensitive to broad-spectrum insecticides and the increasing use of these
insecticides to control other alien invasive pests, e.g. spotted wing Drosophila and brown
marmorated stink bug, are harming them and causing more serious outbreaks of spider
mites.
•
•
•
•
•
•
In this project, teams from 7 EU countries and Canada will model the
performance of each organism in plant-spider mite-predators tritrophic
interaction under changing climatic (CC) conditions.
This will be accompanied by determination of reciprocal transcriptional and
metabolomics changes in plants (tomato and strawberry) and spider mites
(TSSM and TE) upon their interactions under normal and CC scenarios.
In addition, we will search for elicitors and effectors of TSSM and TE that
are capable of modulating plant defences.
Using Systems biology approaches, we will link performance of plants and
mites with genome-wide changes in their responses.
Thus, our study will not only model performance of organisms involve in
tritrophic interaction, but will also model processes whose changes lead to
modulated performance under CC.
This comprehensive knowledge can then be used to develop new tools and
methods for climate-smart pest control
Project obligations (Expectations of FACCE/National authorities)
Start and end dates: 3 year project. Must end by 31 December 2017. Therefore
start 1 January 2015
Scientific reporting: Annual reports to the secretariat based at Projektträger
Jülich, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Germany submitted by the project
coordinator no later than 3 months after the 1st, 2nd and 3rd year from the start
of the grant.
Financial reporting: National authority requirements. For UK (BBSRC), EMR
have to complete and return a finance expenditure statement within 3 months of
the end date of a research grant, and annual interim reports
Dissemination: Grant holders will be required to attend the ERANET+
dissemination events. It is a requirement to provide project material to the
ERANET+ call secretariat to appear on the FACCE-JPI website. Grant holders
must acknowledge FACCE ERANET+ and national authorities in their
publications and any other means of dissemination of the project results.
Data Management: Comply with national authority Data Sharing and Open
Access policies.
Collaboration agreement: A collaboration agreement between all project
partners is required. For UK, must be in place no later than 6 months after the
start of the project. For France, before project starts? A notification that the
collaboration agreement is in place and has been signed must be submitted by
the coordinator to the call office. DESCA Horizon 2020 model consortium
agreement provided
Governance structure (section 6)
General assembly (the decision-making body of the consortium)
• Chaired by consortium coordinator (Jerry) and project scientific leader (Mike)
• One representative of each party (can appoint substitute or proxy)
INRA (Maria), MPI (Lothar), CUT (Menelaos), UvA (Thomas), VIB UoG (Yves/Stephane),
UPM (Isabel), CSIC (Pedro), UWA (Mike/Vava), EMR (Richard)
• Properly run meeting with agenda and minutes etc
• Meet face to face annually
Management support team (= ‘Steering Committee’)
(appointed by general assembly)
• Chaired by project leader (J Cross) and project scientific leader (Mike)
• WP leaders to report on progress in their WP
WP1 (Maria), WP2 (Isabel), WP3 (Lothar), WP4 (Thomas), WP5 (Yves/Stephane)
• Meet by Skype or ‘phone conference call quarterly etc
• Properly run meeting with agenda and minutes
Scientific advisory board
• Who?
• Modus operandi?
Finalise collaboration agreement
Section 6
a)
Do we want to use the management support team option
b)
Do any of the consortium have identified affiliated entities they need
registering
c)
Will the External Expert Advisory Board be formed
Section 8
There are two options and we should decide which to opt for
8.4 we need to decide if that clause is needed.
9.4 and 9.6 consortium should be consulted
11.8 we need to decide which option
Next steps
1. Jerry to finalise the collaboration agreement and send to all
parties for signature
2. Consortium partners to get collaboration agreement singed by
correct authority and return .pdf of signature page to J Cross
INRA (Maria), MPI (Lothar), CUT (Menelaos), UvA (Thomas), VIB
UoG (Yves), UPM (Isabel), CSIC (Pedro), UWA (Mike/Vava)
3. Finalise start date (1 Jan 2015) with national authorities
4. WP leaders to manage their WP!
5. Agee programme of Management Support Team meetings
6. Agree General Assembly meetings
QUARTER (3 months)
Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
Q5
WP1: Species distribution models and tritrophic interactions under CC scenarios in Europe
Task 1.1. Recording occurrences of pests and predators in the EU
Task 1.2. Mites-plant interactions under varying climatic conditions
Task 1.3. Assessing demographic parameters and dispersion of mite
pests and predators under climate change conditions
Task 1.4. Predation capacity of predators and tritrophic interactions
under simulated climate change conditions
Task 1.5. Predicting distributions of mites and effectiveness of predator
control under CC
Task 1.6. Field validating the pest-natural enemy distribution model and
effectiveness of biological control
WP2: Reciprocal transcriptional responses of mites and plants under CC
Task 2.1. Preparation of tomato and mite (TSSM and TE) samples under
varying CC
Task 2.2. Identification of tomato DEGs upon mite herbivory under
varying CC
Task 2.3. Preparation of strawberry and mite (TSSM) samples under
varying CC
Task 2.4. Identification of strawberry DEGs upon mite herbivory under
varying CC
Task 2.5. Identification of mite responses upon feeding on tomato and
strawberries under varying CC
WP3: Identification of plant and mite metabolites upon herbivory and CC
Task 3.1 Analysis of tomato metabolites upon mite herbivory under
varying CC
Task 3.2. Identification of metabolites and lipids associated with
differential response in tomato to mite infection under cc and control
conditions
Task 3.3: Analysis of strawberry metabolites upon mite herbivory under
varying CC
Q6
Q7
Q8
Q9
Q10 Q11
Q12
Task 3.4. Identification of metabolites and lipids associated with
differential response in strawberry to mite infection under cc and control
conditions
Task 3.5: Mite metabolomics/lipidomic responses upon feeding on
tomato and strawberries under varying CC
Task 3.6. Identification of TSSM and TE responses upon feeding on
tomato plants under varying CC
Task 3.7: Identification of TSSM responses upon feeding on strawberry
under varying CC
WP4: Identification of mite elicitors/effectors and their activities
Task 4.1: Detection of proteins and peptides in saliva of spider mites by
using HPLC - MS
Task 4.2: Sequencing the transcriptome of TSSM and TE heads
Task 4.3: Validation of the putative salivary secretome
Task 4.4: Test interactions of putative effectors with plant immunity or
physiology through infiltration of peptides or transient expression of
effectors in model plants
Task 4.5: Identification of candidate transcription factors (TFs)
responsible for reprograming/suppression of induced defense response
WP5: Systems biology: Correlation of plant transcriptomics and metabolomic responses with tritrophic performance and mite transcriptome
responses
Task 5.1.1: Establish reference transcriptome for strawberry
Task 5.1.2: Perform DEG analysis from strawberry RNAseq.
Task 5.1.3: Overlay Tomato micro-array and strawberry RNAseq
expression compendia.
Task 5.2: Prepare a framework for transcriptome and metabolome data
integration.
Task 5.3: Populate pathway databases for the plant side as well as for
the mite side.
Task 5.4: Build an orthologous gene-set between Tomato and
Strawberry.
Task 5.5: Integration of metabolomics and transcriptomic data via
multivariate statistics