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Closed for application
C39.CU5.01

Holistic strategies to contrast climate change impact in maize value chain

  • Reference person
    Paola
    Battilani
    paola.battilani@unicatt.it
  • Host University/Institute
    Catholic University of the S.H.
  • Internship
  • Research Keywords
  • Reference ERCs
  • Reference SDGs
  • Co-Supervisor

Description

Maize is a very versatile crop, growing in all sorts of edaphic, altitudinal and fertility conditions, which explains its global adaptability and many types of varieties. This crop has become the most important raw material for animal feed and for several industrial processes. The impact of climate change (CC) has been identified as an emerging issue for food and feed safety and many changing patterns in mycotoxin contamination in maize due to CC were identified as a potential emerging hazard. Maize hosts several mycotoxin producing fungi with Aspergillus flavus and Fusarium verticillioides as the most relevant species and aflatoxins and fumonisins as crucial toxins.The research project will investigate new methods to prevent the contamination in the field. New sustainable technologies will be developed to monitor toxigenic fungi, analyze and prevent the mycotoxin contamination risk. Research efforts will consider the impact of CC with focus on: (i) the identification of accurate techniques for phenotyping ear rot and mycotoxin contamination and the identification of novel host germplasm sources and resistance traits for marker-assisted selection programs, (ii) the application of biological control agents to reduce/compete with the toxigenic fungi, (iii) the improvement of predictive models for mycotoxin contamination during the growing season, (iv) machine learning application to optimize the support from all data available in mycotoxin mitigation.

Suggested skills:

Research team and environment