The Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) is Spain's largest public research institution and a major participant in EU-funded projects, known for its extensive multidisciplinary expertise and leading role in the European Research Area (ERA) being the top Spanish organization in terms of the number of projects and economic return within the EU Framework Programmes. It ranks among Europe's main research organizations, positioned third among public research organizations for the number of projects awarded under programs like Horizon 2020 (H2020). Research is conducted through over 120 institutes and centers across all Spanish autonomous regions, comprising more than 1,500 research groups and 4,000 researchers. This critical mass of qualified personnel provides significant capacity for large-scale international collaborations. Proven Coordination Capacity: CSIC has a strong track record of leading international consortia, with around 130 projects in execution led by the institution. This highlights its capability and solvency in coordinating large, complex European projects. CSIC is the leading Spanish entity in attracting highly competitive individual grants, such as those from the European Research Council (ERC), having secured more than 150 ERC projects across all categories (Starting, Consolidator, Advanced, Synergy, and Proof of Concept).
Main task in the project
Our research group is interested in the design of innovative agricultural goods using genomics, biotechnology and synthetic biology tools. Our main experimental system is the tomato fruit, and our aim is to increase its added value with new shapes, colors, aromas and healthy properties and to do this despite stress conditions imposed by climate change. For this, we browse the natural variability of tomato-related wild species in order to identify loci conferring fruit quality traits and stress tolerance. Once those loci are identified, we use marker-assisted breeding to transfer them to modern tomato cultivars. Moving beyond the limits imposed by sexual hybridization and natural variability, we also make use of biotechnology tools as multigene engineering and genetic transformation to bring new quality traits into the tomato genome. The IBMCP group participating in PRIMER is led by Prof Antonio Granell, Dr. Antonio José Monforte, Dr Diego Orzaez and Dr. Clara Pons.
Previous EU-funded projects related to tomato diversity and stress tolerance: EU-SOL, TRADITOM, TOMGEM, HARNESSTOM, PRIMER In this MSCA-DN PRIMER project we will use lines developed in collaboration with ENZA Zaden that show increase tolerance to stresses to combine with priming and additional tolerance genes to understand the underlying mechanisms and produce more resilient tomato plants
Team member information
