About EVOLVE

Wheat is Europe’s most important staple crop and supplies about a fifth of the world’s calories. Climate change increasingly exposes it to drought, heat and nutrient shortage at the same time, and these combined stresses can cut yields severely.

More than 60% of EU agricultural soils are degraded, and nitrogen fertilisers contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution. Conventional breeding and fertilisation alone cannot solve these problems.

Plants and soil microbes constantly exchange signals. Part of this conversation happens through extracellular vesicles (EVs): nano-sized particles that roots release into the soil, carrying small RNAs, proteins and metabolites.

Recent research suggests that EVs help decide which microbes thrive around the roots and what they do, for example how they cycle nitrogen and phosphorus or help the plant tolerate drought. EVOLVE starts from the idea that wheat varieties differ in the signals they send, and that these differences can be used to breed better crops and design new bio-inputs.

• Study how plants form EVs and choose what they carry, from model plants to wheat.
• Investigate how drought and nitrogen shortage change the signals wheat sends through EVs.
• Test how these signals affect soil microbes involved in nutrient cycling and plant growth.
• Develop new bio-based inputs that deliver beneficial signals to roots and soil microbes.
• Combine plant, EV and microbiome data with AI to predict the best matches between wheat varieties and microbes.
• Use fast breeding methods to fix promising traits in new wheat lines.
• Assess grain nutritional quality, baking properties and environmental footprint.

By the end of the project, EVOLVE aims to show in laboratory and greenhouse conditions that EV-guided breeding and bio-inputs can deliver:

• wheat that copes better with combined drought and nutrient stress
• more efficient use of nitrogen and water
• lower nitrous oxide emissions and nitrate leaching
• healthier, more diverse soil microbial communities
• grains with improved nutritional value
• biological fertilisation tools that reduce dependence on chemical inputs

The project supports the European Green Deal, the Farm to Fork Strategy and the EU Mission Soil.