In agricultural systems, frost patterns affect not only the regional suitability of crops but unseasonable frosts can greatly reduce crop yields by causing vegetative injury to sensitive seedlings or by damaging sensitive organs, such as flowers and fruits, resulting in reduced yields without causing vegetative injury. Similarly, in natural ecosystems the prevalence, intensity and duration of frost events affect not only seedling establishment and persistence but also overall plant growth and reproductive performance. Low temperatures therefore influence both species diversity and ecosystem productivity.

 

 

Acclimation of plants to low growth temperatures is associated with complex changes, including modification of the fatty acid composition of membrane lipids, induction of specific low temperature induced proteins and the enhancement of pathways involved in photosynthetic and respiratory carbon metabolism. Studies being conducted within the network address the regulation of cold induced genes, the timing of photosynthetic and respiratory acclimation and the coordination of the different steps at genetic, biochemical and functional whole plant levels. Projects within the network also address one of the central questions that remains unanswered - how do plants sense that it is cold and how do they transduce this signal into the changes in gene expression and metabolic activity that have been described.

 

 

For more information of the projects being run by the different participating research groups, please visit the individual web sites by going to the cities marked on the map. Specific information about collaborative research within the Network can be found in the activities section of this site.