Executive Summary : | Brinjal, a popular vegetable grown globally, is a rich source of nutrients and used in treating disease conditions. It is moderately deep-rooted and can tolerate temperatures from 25-30°C. The combined effects of heat and moisture stress on brinjal crop productivity are higher than individual stress, limiting photosynthesis, respiration, carboxylation, electron transport, biomass, and yield. Even mild heat and moisture stress can impact yield up to 50%. Plants have evolved complex responses to stress, including morphological, physiological, biochemical, signaling, hormonal, protein, and metabolite changes. Uncovering plant characters and phenotypes under stress connects genomics, metabolomics, and phenotype. The metabolome is considered the pinnacle of the omics trio, reflecting the ultimate stage of biological information flow and defining phenotype. However, there is a need to understand the metabolomic and molecular mechanisms conferring combinatorial stress tolerance in brinjal. The current project focuses on understanding the mechanism of combinatorial stress tolerance in brinjal. A set of 120 germplasm accessions will be characterized for heat, low soil moisture, and combinatorial stress response under field/polyhouse conditions. A set of ~20 contrasts representing variability in stress tolerance will be shortlisted for further analysis. Metabolomic profiling will provide trait, genotype, and stress-specific metabolites, and the important biosynthetic/signaling pathway will be identified. The expression pattern of a few important genes regulating these pathways will be analyzed through RT-PCR assay. The metabolites conferring stress tolerance will also be validated in other germplasm lines based on stress tolerance levels. |