1. Improving food quality & safety -omics & agricultural management: driving forces? 1. What will an ideal plant be able to do? 2. How far away are we from delivering it? Where are the bottlenecks? 3. What are the agronomical implications of adopting the ideal plant? 4. Are there agronomical strategies that will enhance/limit its performance in the field? At the outset of this workshop, members of COST 859 WG2 and WG3 were asked

2. Improving food quality & safety 1. What will an ideal plant be able to do? An ideal plant will:  Limit uptake of As, Cd, Hg, PCDDs, PCDFs  Increase uptake of Fe, Zn, Se  Deliver high biomass  Non-food or contained processing If it is to be accepted as a GMO, it will need to:  Be non-invasive  Have no relatives  Have reduced seed dispersion Examples of plants for the starting point Tobacco Sugar beet Willow Economic factors will drive selection

3. Improving food quality & safety 1. (contin) What will an ideal plant be able to do?  Plant-associated microorganisms –endophytic & rhizospheric bacteria & mycorrhizae –also need to be considered.  There will probably need to be several ideal plants selected for a given set of environmental conditions  Further options are to:  Develop several accumulators for each metal  Isolate the pollutant with a landscaping strategy based on tolerant plants.  Develop specialised crops for either micronutrients or extraction of pollutants, with ecological fitness  Select an ideal technology to suit a given plant

4. Improving food quality & safety  Sustainability and economical viability (ie low inputs and max. outcome, no set-asides) need also to be considered  We need to understand perfectly how the ideal plant works, its behaviour in the environment, and long-term stability, and avoid creating new problems  A crop according to the COST aims:  exclude non-essential heavy metals and other pollutants  detoxify organic compounds and incorporate inorganics to innocuous compounds  selectively take up or exclude elements/xenobiotics  is there a possible plant with a good taste (both by its genome and by the agricultural practice) and a good productivity? 1. (contin) What will an ideal plant be able to do?

5. Improving food quality & safety  Many genes are differentially expressed –but which are important?  Strategies are needed to limit the expression of particular cell types or cell numbers  Gene expression is not all: we need to understand  regulators necessary for protein expression and /or enzyme activity  sub-cellular location of key proteins  soil/seed relationships –eg. Zn story  impact of antinutrients /promoters on bioavailability  plant physiology in different conditions and link it with gene expression/gene regulation  storage mechanisms and chemical speciation in plant tissues  plant diversity (intra-and inter species variability)  We need to standardise plant cultures and tissue sampling to compare and link different studies at the molecular level 2. How far away are we from delivering? Where are the bottlenecks?

6. Improving food quality & safety  Delivery will be continuous process involving:  selection of a candidate plant  measurement of its natural variation  development of an understanding of the mechanism of abilities  tests using the perfected plant  return with appropriate regulatory units to the original candidate plant  continue the cycle driven by food/feed requirements  Define a combination of 2/3 species by rational criteria 2 (contin). How far away are we from delivering? Where are the bottlenecks?

7. Improving food quality & safety 3. What are the agronomical implications of adopting the ideal plant?  should be economical and high yielding  compatible with other plants in a rotation  As many soils are degraded through bad agricultural practices (excess fertilisers related to the green revolution) it is necessary to find plants that deliver good yields with few, natural fertilisers  Relations with plant and animal communities may change ecosystem functions  grafted plants

8. Improving food quality & safety  Agronomic biofortification – but this could be expensive  Crop rotation (successive use of plants with different abilities may lead to accumulated exudates)  Nutrient interactions in soils and plants are important  Immobilise pollutants by soil amendments  Optimise microbial assistance adapted to soil quality and climate change 4. Are there agronomical strategies that will enhance/limit its performance in the field?

9. Improving food quality & safety General discussion  a case can be made for many types of culture provided energy inputs are considered  Hydroponic culture is cheap, safe and guaranteed;  organic culture is perceived as expensive but can deliver high yield with minimum input;  sand culture?  soil may have too many metals for plants  consider fast-growing willow for metal accumulation  the ‘tasks’ should be spread amongst the eco-community  sustainability is essential: (eg consider proteins from plants vs proteins from animals in an ecosystem context)

10. Improving food quality & safety General discussion  there are short-term goals and long-term goals – these will dictate whether we work with a ‘real’ crop or a model  RNAi technology could deliver short-term goals  plant diversity is being effectively exploited  brassica  arabidopsis  land IS polluted –the challenge is great  we are close in our understanding of hyperaccumulators, but much work is needed on eg oxidative stress; glutathione metabolism  metabolic understanding is required