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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.
Sirine Bouguerra
Session
Co-leader(s)
João Oliveira-Pacheco; Anabela Cachada; Carla Patinha; Nuno Durães & Ruth Pereira
Project type
Projet OHM
Biologie
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.

Leader

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

Sirine
Bouguerra
Sirine Bouguerra PhD in Biology, she is since October 2021 contracted investigator at the Department of Biology of the Faculty of Sciences of Porto, and GreenUPorto – Sustainable Agrifood Research Centre. She had graduation in “advanced technological studies in biotechnology applied to the health and the environment”, Licentiate degree in “life science” and master degree in “Environmental Biotechnology”. Her main research activities are related to environmental risk assessment, terrestrial and aquatic ecotoxicology, soil physic-chemical, microbiological, and biochemical properties, and her current research work focus on contaminated agroecosystems and agricultural practices. She has a multidisciplinary formation in environmental sciences obtained at the University of Sfax-Tunisia, the University of Aveiro-Portugal, and the University of Porto-Portugal. The main research interests are related to the evaluation and quality improvement of contaminated soils contaminated....
João
Oliveira-Pacheco
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1894-3002
João Oliveira-Pacheco is a PhD researcher at GreenUPorto in Faculty of Science of University of Porto. João has a PhD in Infection Biology (University College Dublin, Ireland), a Master in Molecular Genetics (Minho University, Portugal), and a degree in Biochemistry (Minho University, Portugal). João was part of an ITN-MSCA (OPATHY) where he obtained his PhD degree in 2020. The main focus of his work is to apply omics and molecular biology tools to characterize the soil biodiversity, genetic variability of environmental pathogens and the identification of genetic biomarkers responsive to abiotic stress factors. He is author and 5 peer-reviewed papers (H-index: 4) and several oral communications and poster presentations.
Links:
Loop profile: 531474
Ciência ID: 5A10-3FAC-8326
Scopus Author ID: 57202267653
ResearcherID: AAJ-9043-2021
AuthenticusID: R-00J-QCP
Anabela
Cachada
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3377-9300
Anabela Cachada PhD is a researcher in the area of Risk Assessment and Environmental Chemistry at University of Aveiro and University of Porto (Portugal). She has a PhD in Chemistry (University of Aveiro, Portugal), a Master in Geochemistry (University of Aveiro, Portugal), and a degree in Environmental Engineering and of the Natural Resources (University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal). She has been working during several years on soil pollution, particularly with organic contaminants. Nowadays she is particularly interested in the risk assessment of contaminated soils and in the understanding about how soil pollution affect ecosystem services. She participated in 29 multidisciplinary research projects (including five European funded projects), related to soil pollution monitoring and with the behavior of organic contaminants in the environment. She has 34 papers published in international scientific periodicals with...
Carla
Patinha
C. Patinha graduated in Geological Engineering by the University of Aveiro (UA) in 1994, completed the M.Sc. degree in Geochemistry by UA in 1997, and completed her PhD degree in Geosciences by the UA in 2002.
In June of 2001 began her activities at Geosciences Department of the University of Aveiro as technician, assuming the management of geochemistry and hydrochemistry laboratories. Since October 2018 she is Assistant Professor at Geosciences Department of University of Aveiro and Director of the Masters in Geological Engineering. She is researcher of GEOBIOTEC research unit. Since obtaining her PhD degree published 79 papers in international peer review journals, and published about 100 papers in National and International Conferences Proceedings. C Patinha has been participating and coordinating several national and international R&D Projects. She supervised several master thesis and graduation projects. She was member of several Organizing Committee of International...
Nuno
Durães
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2834-043X
SCOPUS: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=12140132100
PUBLONS: https://publons.com/researcher/1351547/nuno-duraes/
RESEARCHGATE: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nuno_Duraes
finished his degree in Geology at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto 2004. In 2006, he completed the Specialization Course of the Master in Prospecting and Evaluation of Geological Resources - Branch of Mineral Resources at the same institution. He concluded his PhD in Geosciences in 2011 at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto and University of Aveiro. Between 2012 and 2019 he was a Postdoctoral fellow of Foundation for Science and Technology. He is currently a researcher at the GEOBIOTEC research unit (Department of Geosciences of the University of Aveiro). His research has been focused mainly on the areas of environmental geochemistry and biogeochemistry. To date, he has 33 publications, 71 communications in...
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...