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BOOSTER scientists spotlight drought-resilient “resurrection plant” in VIB-IPBO Online Café
On 11 December, VIB-IPBO hosted a new edition of its Online Café series, bringing together two BOOSTER scientists to share cutting-edge insights into drought resilience research.
IDConsortium
These webinars are designed to highlight how similar scientific challenges are approached across continents, making BOOSTER—with its strong Europe–Africa collaboration—a natural fit for the format.
The session focused on Eragrostis nindensis, commonly known as lovegrass, a remarkable species native to southern Africa. This plant is widely recognised for its extreme drought tolerance and ability to survive near-total desiccation, effectively “resurrecting” when water becomes available again . As such, it serves as a powerful model for understanding how crops can adapt to water scarcity.
During the webinar, Dr. Llewelyn van der Pas from the University of Cape Town explored the physiological and stress biology mechanisms that enable this resilience. His work integrates large-scale proteomic studies with rhizosphere microbiome analyses, revealing how both the plant and its associated microbial communities contribute to survival under prolonged drought conditions. Complementing this perspective, Dr. Bojana Banović Đeri from CREA Ricerca (Italy) presented advanced molecular insights into drought response. Her research focuses on transcriptional and regulatory networks identified through mRNA-seq and MOA-seq analyses. These findings provide a deeper understanding of how gene regulation underpins drought tolerance and how such mechanisms could be translated into crops like maize and teff.
This exchange exemplifies the BOOSTER project’s broader ambition: to uncover species-specific drought-responsive traits and translate them into strategies for improving resilience in key crops . By combining physiological, microbial, and molecular approaches, the project continues to advance knowledge that is essential for climate-resilient agriculture.
Watch the full webinar here:
About IDConsortium
IDConsortium is a consultancy founded in Seville in 2009 with the aim of helping researchers and companies to internationalize and showcase their Research and Development (R&D) by joining international consortia to carry out different lines of research, development and innovation.
To date, it has successfully managed 22 European and national projects, worth more than €88 million in public funding. Currently, more than 250 European and international partners are part of its network.
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