SBIR/STTR Phase I: Engineering Broad-Spectrum Disease Resistance in Crop Plants.

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project proposes to establish the feasibility of engineering broad-spectrum disease resistance in crops. Pathogens cause enormous world-wide annual losses in crop yield. Prior research has shown that constitutive activation of the transcription factor AtERF1 confers resistance to several fungal pathogens in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. This Phase I project has three major goals : (1) To test additional Arabidopsis lines constitutively expressing AtERF1 and correlate AtERF1 expression levels with resistance to fungal and bacterial pathogens ; (2) To determine if constitutive expression of AtERF1 is detrimental to Arabidopsis plants, and (3) to identify transcription factors that are functionally analogous to AtERF1 in a number of crop species, including canola, tomato, rice and maize. The results of Phase I research are expected to indicate the technical feasibility of using AtERF1 to engineer enhanced pathogen resistance without adversely affecting other important agronomic properties of plants. The commercial application of this project is in the field of agriculture.