SOAR is a research school. In addition to the focus on PhD students, SOAR also includes graduates, postdocs and supervisors in the activities and networks. This is important because they also constitute the research environment, in which the PhD student is under education. SOAR wants to contribute to the professional discussions with a special focus on the organic food and farming systems.
The research interests of SOAR cover a wide range of subjects within organic agriculture and food systems:
Farming system research
Crop production
Resource management
Ecosystem services
Climate change mitigation and adaptation
Livestock production
Animal health and welfare
Consumer and citizens’ involvement
Regulations and policies
Food chains
Food sovereignty
Name
Sébastien Louarn
Project
Proteome analysis of cold stored carrots for revealing changes in susceptibility to post harvest diseases during storage
Supervisors
David Collinge, University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Life Sciences
Ole Nørregaard Jensen, University of Southern Denmark
Birgit Jensen, University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Life Sciences
University
University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Life Sciences
Objectives:
1. To study disease progress of liquorices rot in carrots during post harvest storage in the stages from contamination or/and latent infections till visible disease symptoms can be observed. The studies will be based on real time PCR and DNA reporter technology including advanced microscope techniques.
2. To study plant-pathogen interactions based on proteome analysis and investigation of key secondary metabolites in order to reveal determinants of post harvest resistance to liquorices rot and black tips of carrots at different stages of disease progress during cold storage
3. To investigate the impact of cropping system described in WP1 on susceptibility to liquorices rot.
Background
Post harvest diseases play an important role for product quality of vegetables such as long-term cold stored carrots. More than 50% of carrots may be discarded due to post harvest diseases developing during storage. Mycocentrospora acerina causing liquorices rot and black root tips is introduced to cold stored carrots with fungal spores in soil adhering to the roots or as latent root infections. This disease is one of the more troublesome post harvest pathogens. It is believed that carrots at the beginning of storage can resist disease development due mainly to chemical defence mechanisms and in this proteins and peptides are considered to be important. Thus, it is hypothesized that proteome changes during storage of carrots relates to susceptibility to post harvest problems caused by M. acerina and, that important determinants of resistance can be revealed through proteome analyses of carrots sampled at different stages of disease progress during storage.
