Improving plant immunity and crop yield

Brassica oleracea, a group of vegetable like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and kale, are an important crop worldwide and are of significant commercial value. Owe to the abundant vitamins, fibres and other bioactive compounds, vegetable brassicas are often recommended as ‘super foods’ for human health. However, horticulture brassicas always suffered from diseases are caused by a range of organisms: fungi, oomycetes, bacteria and viruses. Black rot (Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris) is considered one of the most important diseases of brassicas worldwide and it regularly causes significant losses in marketable yield. In order to meet our targets for food security and production sustainability, it is important to develop resistant cultivars against both biotic and abiotic stress. Jianan Lu and her team have Medical and Life Science Reseaerch funding to identify a higher number of pathogen-related proteins in the resistance and improve the annotation of Brassica genome.

Report of this project: https://www.medicallifesciences.org.uk/reporting-on-outcomes