Plants survive drought through long-distance molecular communication. This project will identify small, secreted peptides that move from drought-tolerant wild tomato rootstocks to drought-sensitive cultivated shoots, transmitting stress information and enhancing resilience. By decoding these mobile signals, the project will reveal a hidden layer of whole-plant communication.

Drought is one of the greatest threats to global food production and is expected to intensify under climate change. Yet the molecular signals that coordinate drought responses across the plant remain poorly understood. Discovering how roots communicate protective information to shoots could open new opportunities for breeding and engineering more resilient crops.

Using grafted tomato plants that combine drought-tolerant and drought-sensitive

genotypes, I will integrate RNA sequencing, xylem sap proteomics, and CRISPR- Cas9 genome editing to identify and validate functional peptide signals. Only peptides

shown to be mobile, drought-responsive, and causally linked to rootstock-mediated

protection will be confirmed as long-distance stress messengers

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