The Mediterranean basin is vulnerable to climate change, with high temperatures negatively impacting crop performance and productivity, especially in woody crops like citrus. This project aims to study temperature stress’s effects on reproduction and plant physiology, especially in mandarins and mandarin-like varieties such as clementine. The study will use an integrated cytological, molecular, and genetic approach, including histo-molecular analysis, in vitro assays, and female gametophyte analysis. Transcriptomic and epigenomic studies will provide insights into the pathways involved in plants’ responses to temperature stress during reproduction. This comprehensive understanding of temperature variation will help unravel the physiological, molecular, and genetic basis of sterility in citrus and define the conditions causing seedy fruit production and high depreciation of commercial value. The availability of reference genomes for clementine and mandarin will enable the development of biotechnological tools for selecting new varieties with better performance under temperature stress.

The project is funded by European Union – Next-GenerationEU – National Recovery and Resilience PLAN (PNRR) – Mission 4, Component 2, Investiment 1.1 Fondo per il Programma Nazionale di Ricerca e Progetti di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale (PRIN). Project N. 2022PMF3XE_001