Detalle de: Reproductive biology and genomics for a sustainable production of subtropical fruits in mediterranean climates

Tropical and subtropical fruit crops are fundamental for food security in most low- and middle-income countries, although their commercial importance is significantly increasing worldwide. Spain is the only European country with a significant production of subtropical fruits, although a significant change that is taken place in the last years is the expansion of some of these crops, mainly avocado, to other regions in Spain and to other countries in the Mediterranean basin. In addition to the production in the Canary Islands, in the Iberian Peninsula, this production is primarily localized in the Andalusian Mediterranean coast, mainly in the provinces of Malaga and Granada. This particular situation of Spain as the only European country with a significant commercial production of subtropical fruits allows us to be a major player at the international level in scientific studies of these crops. This project is built on the results obtained in previous projects aimed at optimizing a sustainable production of subtropical fruits in continental Europe and that have enabled important advances in the development and application of molecular markers as well as in elucidating the mechanisms present in the flower that regulate fruit set and production in these species. This new proposal is the continuation of an ongoing research project that will end in 2023 (PID2019-109566RB-I00). As a result of the efforts performed in previous projects, we are currently in a position to continue moving forward in building knowledge in these crops combining basic and applied research in a new multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary project. The project is structured along two main objectives aimed to optimize a sustainable production of subtropical fruits in continental Europe combining phenomic and genomic tools with the understanding and solving of the main bottlenecks in reproductive biology that limit productivity of these crops in mediterranean climates. The proposal covers different crops (avocado, mango, cherimoya and pawpaw) for which the project is structured differently depending of the advances obtained in each of them in previous projects. This is clearly a multidisciplinary proposal that combines advanced microscopic studies with field work, molecular, omics and biotechnological tools. In addition to the direct impact on the production sector, the peculiar phylogenetic situation of three of the species studied (cherimoya, pawpaw and avocado) in the clade Magnoliid of early divergent angiosperms with clear implications for evolutive inferences of genomics and reproductive biology in flowering plants. The proposal has a clear internationalization and cooperation for development component through the participation of foreign scientists and the transfer of the results obtained to low- and middle-income countries through the projects and networks in which this group is involved.