The Plant Physiology and Agrobiology group belongs to the Science Dept. of the UPNA. The group is specialized in the study of legume plants, which are key elements both for human nutrition and animal feed due to their high protein content and their ability to establish nitrogen-fixing symbiosis with Rhizobium bacteria. This symbiosis provides a source of reduced nitrogen into the environment, without the negative impact of the excessive application of nitrogen fertilizers. Within the group, the fellow will join the symbiosis team, working on the regulation of symbiotic nitrogen fixation, with a focus on the role of the plant hormone ethylene and its interaction to the plant response to drought stress conditions.

The Plant Physiology and Agrobiology group collaborates actively with academic partners at the international and national levels, as well as with companies, particularly in the development of fertilizers, plant nutrition and nanotechnology. The group has received continuous funding from regional, national, and European grants, having previous experience in the application and management of European projects such as the EU FP6 “Grain legume” project and the FP7 “SymBioSignal” IOF Marie Curie Action.  The host group is one of the best positioned in the university ranking and periodically receives excellent scores by the Spanish Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA), following gender balance guidelines.

Members: 7 permanent researchers, 14  postdocs and PhD students, and one permanent technician.

In the last 5 years, more than 25 papers mostly in the Q1 of Plant Science in journals such as Plant Physiology, New Phytologist, Journal of Experimental Botany and Frontiers in Plant Sc.

EU FP6 “Grain legume” project (FP6 FOOD-CT-2004-506223)

Over 24 research projects at the national and international level. Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness funds for over 20 years, best-qualified projects at the national level (see RTI2018-09463-BC22, AGL2014-56561-P, or AGL2011-30386-C02-01, among others), with a total amount more than 1.5M €.

Patent PCT 2008/070144.

University of Vienna, Austria (Stefanie Wienkoop)

Company BlueAgro, Spain (Santiago Cenoz)

INRAE, Center National de la Recherche Scientifique – CNRS, France (Andreas Niebel and Fernanda de Carvalho-Niebel)

Oxford, UK (Phillip Poole).

Wisconsin (Jean Michel Ané) and Univ. of California Davis (Douglas R. Cook), USA

Australia (Michael Djordjevic).

University of the Basque Country, as well as several groups at the CSIC at the national level.

A research stay of 6 months will be offered at the company DF-BlueAgro. This secondment will provide new insights into how companies work to translate basic research into commercial and industrially viable products and applications. As part of this process, the research stay will make possible the validation of field essays based on different crops, environmental conditions and countries, as well as the optimization of methodologies for the implementation, production and development of products at industrial scale and the analysis of such viable products to comply with the national and international regulatory framework.

Additional research stays will be offered to the fellow to be trained in novel techniques in functional biology and proteomics: at the University of Vienna, the fellow will receive training on plant proteomics, relative and quantitative protein profiling (LC/MS-MS) and plant-microbial interactions, and at the INRAE/CNRS in Toulouse (France), the fellow will learn state-of-the-art techniques applied to molecular and functional studies of the legume-rhizobium symbiosis, including imaging techniques (high resolution microscopy), plant transformation, and gene silencing technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9. The fellow will be co-supervised by Dr. Fernanda de Carvalho-Niebel and Dr. Andreas Niebel, who are the directors of the CNRS and count with numerous projects and publications in the field (see “Others”).

The host group offers an international environment where the fellow will gain knowledge on molecular plant physiology and a deeper understanding of the symbiosis established between legume plants and symbiotic bacteria. The research will be focused on different aspects of the interaction, including the effects of the plant hormone ethylene, but also the regulation of symbiotic nitrogen fixation under drought stress, one of the core expertise of the lab. The secondments provided will complete his/her training by offering different environments to develop further skills (both soft and technical skills) and broaden his/her perspective of the field. The group is also active in outreach activities and public science dissemination events, at which the fellow will be integrated.

The fellow will also work under the co-supervision of Dr. Estibaliz Larrainzar, a Ramón y Cajal fellow, with a solid background in the study of the legume-Rhizobium interactions. Estibaliz completed her PhD in Plant Physiology at the UPNA in 2009 (extraordinary award) and did a 3 year stay at the University of California, Davis, funded by postdoctoral Fulbright and MSCA IOF fellowships. Back in Spain, she obtained a Juan de la Cierva fellowship and, more recently, her current contract has allowed the establishment of a new research line in the group focused on the role of ethylene in the Medicago truncatula-Sinorhizobium meliloti symbiosis. Metrics: h = 15, Clarivate-WoS, Core Collection;  h = 16, Scopus. http://www.unavarra.es/pdi?uid=7766

Additional research stays will be offered at the Endosymbiotic infection and nodule development Group at the INRAE/CNRS in Toulouse (France), directed Dr. Fernanda de Carvalho-Niebel and Dr. Andreas Niebel.  https://www6.toulouse.inrae.fr/lipm_eng/Research/Endosymbiotic-infection-and-nodule-development/Members