Porteur
Sirine Bouguerra
Session
Co-porteur(s)
João Oliveira-Pacheco; Anabela Cachada; Carla Patinha; Nuno Durães & Ruth Pereira
Titre
2Improve: Boost the potential of resistant indigenous plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria to improve crop productivity and soil quality in Estarreja and Baixo Vouga Lagunar affected agroecosystems.
Résumé
The threatens to agriculture soils from the Estarreja and Baixo Vouga Lagunar (BVL) regions include the combination of several anthropogenic and environmental factors, such as industrial pollution, intensive farming practices, overuse of fertilizers, the use of contaminated groundwater for irrigation, and salinization due to surface saltwater intrusion. For instance, these factors contributed to land degradation and therefore to crop productivity and safety decreasing. Maize (Zea mays L.) is one of the most important crops in these regions and boosting maize production in affected soils can have a significant socio-economic impact. Thus, the need of sustainable and eco-friendly solutions to improve productivity is one of the major challenges of agriculture activity in these regions. Estarreja and BVL may also be living labs, providing experience to other sites, where these approaches may be transferred. Several studies have demonstrated that inoculation with indigenous rhizobacteria can enhance plant performance and growth. Driven by described issues and based on knowledges acquired from our previous OHM projects (e.g: SoilGenomic, 2016; NotillAgri-Estarreja, 2017; Nameless, 2017; SoilSalt, 2017; SoilRice, 2018), this proposal aims to explore the potential of a consortium of indigenous plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPB) that are resistant to metal(loids) present in those soils, as well as PGPB well adapted to high levels of salinity and re-applied them to reduce problems associated with stressful environments via ex-situ bioinoculation of new seeds (before sowing) and in-situ bioinoculation of new plantlets. Accordingly, this may contribute to minimizing impacts on crops productivity and assure more sustainable agriculture practices.
Type
Projet OHMs
OHM(s) concerné(s)
  • OHM Estarreja
Disciplines
Biologie

Porteur

Sirine
Bouguerra
Sirine Bouguerra PhD is a researcher working in Ecological Risk Assessment and in New Agricultural Practices at GreenUPorto – Sustainable Agrifood Research Centre & Faculty of Sciences of Porto, University of Porto, Portugal. She has a PhD in Biological Engineering and a background in Environmental Sciences obtained at the University of Sfax, Tunisia and the University of Porto, Portugal. Main research interests are related to risk assessment of contaminated sites and emergent contaminants such nanomaterials. She has broad expertise in terrestrial and aquatic ecotoxicology, she participated in various research work such phosphogypsum as soil fertilizer and its impact on terrestrial ecosystem, and the phytoremediation of metal contaminated soils from uranium mine in Portugal. She awarded a grant from UNESCO/Keizo Obuchi Research Programme to suport her predoctoral research studies in University of Aveiro, Portugal. She authored several ISI-WOS scientific papers and book chapters. She participated in 5 multidisciplinary research projects (Included one funded by NATO). She is member of the scientific and organising committee of one international conference. Also, she has participated in several national and international conferences, where she has authored/ co-authored 21 communications. Her papers were published in 1st decile journals. Her total number of citations is 242 according (H-index of 5, I-index of 4). She was Post-doctoral fellow in the international project “Sustained Advanced Materials”.

Participants

Ruth
Pereira
Ruth Pereira, PhD and Habilitation in Biology, is since 2011 Assistant Professor with Habilitation at the Department of Biology of the Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, director of GreenUPorto – Sustainable Agrifood Research Centre and director of the Associate Laboratory INOV4AGRO. Her main research interests are related with risk assessment of contaminated sites, and of new chemical substances and terrestrial ecology and ecotoxicology. As a result of her research activity she is the author/co-author of about 160 research papers published in international journals indexed in Science Citation Index (h-index 34). She is/was the supervisor of 8 post-doctoral students, 21 doctoral students, (13 concluded) and several MSc students and Biology internship students. Most of PhD students and all the Post-doctoral students awarded grants from FCT and one from UNESCO. Ruth Pereira was Principal Investigator (PI)/Co-PI and member of the Research Team of several national and...