Overview

World food production is severely affected by biotic stresses caused by pests, such as insects, fungi, bacteria, virus, and nematodes, as well as abiotic stresses such as drought. Despite the massive use of pesticides, a wide range of pests are responsible significant losses in crop production of commodities such as cotton, soybean, sugarcane, and coffee, affecting both small-scale and intensive farming. Moreover, among the predicted impacts of global climate change, increased losses caused by abiotic and biotic stresses will have a profound negative impact on crop productivity. The mitigation of the deleterious effects of climate change caused by biotic and abiotic stresses in agriculture is a great challenge worldwide. In this context, the research group Biotechnology applied to biotic and abiotic stresses employs different approaches and strategies that focus on prospection, isolation, characterization and functional validation of genes / molecules involved in resistance / defense to pests and tolerance to drought, integrating genomic, proteomic, metabolomics, and bioinformatics tools, to develop assets, technologies, products and processes for the generation of resistant/tolerant cultivars to ensure a sustainable agriculture.