Wastewater treatment (WT) is an essential prerequisite for a healthy society. 90 % of the world-wide used water enters the environment untreated. Most rural and periurban regions of developing countries have no access to a wastewater treatment plant (WTP), because current mid/big size WTPs require large power supply and space. Currently septic tanks or soak pits are used in many regions that could be replaced with modular and lightweight WT units, which are easy to transport and handle in hard-to-reach locations. The realization of these required systems is possible through the development of high-strength and lightweight materials.

By using of durable materials, the operating and maintenance costs can be kept as low as possible, which is an important decision criterion concerning the orders. The aim of this project is the realization of an innovative lightweight, modular WTP made with textile reinforced concrete (TRC). The advantage of a modular WTP design lies in a decentralized production facility, whereby all the necessary plant components have to be delivered to the construction site and assembled.

German sewage treatment plant manufacturers are expecting more than 20,000 WTPs to be sold in the European market by 2023. In addition, German SMEs are expecting a very high demand for WTPs due to efforts regarding new wastewater quality regulations by governments and organizations in China and India. About 250,000 of prefabricated WTPs are needed in India.

Co-Principal Investigator
A Subrahmanyam
IIT Madras, Chennai

The main aim of the project is to develop cost-effective, multiplexed label-free fiber optic array biosensor system for simultaneous detection of up to 7 or more waterborne pathogens that are prevalent in Indian sub-continent.

Multi-WAP proposes to develop multiplexed, rapid, accurate, label-free, and real-time method for continuous monitoring the multiple waterborne (faecal) pathogens present in water samples at low cost and high sensitivity (>90%). The analytical/diagnostic platform to be developed is an optical absorbance biosensor, with the prerequisite of having the ability to perform online measurements. Our ambition is to improve the analytical method further to function as a highly efficient screening method for the early detection of life-threatening waterborne diseases in resource-limited settings.

This project addresses a clearly identified need for tests which can significantly surpass the performance of the currently available water monitoring tests. Throughout this project, special attention will be paid to both end-user requirements (performance, cost, ease-of-use) and to manufacturability. The combination of low cost and high accuracy will be achieved through a unique integration of several state-of-the-art concepts, which the partners have separately developed and of which the integration maturity in Multi-WAP platform has to be tested.

IIT (Madras) shall develop the novel fiber optic sensor array with optoelectronic instrumentation and software. The German Research partner (IOT, Braunschweig) shall perform critical surface modifications of the fiber probes. The German industrial partner (LIONEX) shall produce highly specific antibodies to surface biomarkers of E. coli as model analytes and for waterborne faecal pathogens as final arrays followed by their immobilisation on biosensor. The Indian industrial partner (ubio) shall integrate in the device assembly and evaluate the final lab-device using model and pathogen contaminated water samples (along with LIONEX).

LIONEX shall do evaluation and compare the sensor performance with industry standard. Today, there are no analytical methods on the market that fulfil the criteria of being rapid, accurate, label-free, and online for the detection of waterborne pathogens. This is especially true when it comes to screening situations or the performance of diagnoses in resource-limited settings.

In the upcoming years, crop production will be facing an increased demand by the growing and changing world population on the one hand and strong limitations by increasing abiotic stresses, like drought and temperature changes caused by the global climate change on the other hand. Thus, breeders and plant scientists have to provide crop varieties with higher yield, improved yield stability and stress tolerance traits to maintain and increase a sustainable crop production.

In order to enable and maintain growth of plants in the future changing and more extreme environmental conditions, it is required to identify novel mechanisms to improve drought tolerance of crops. To reach this, in this 2+2 project plants were modified to express stress-induced genes from plants growing at extremely high altitudes of India. Such genes have been identified by the Indian partner at IHBT and were transformed in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana (CSIR-IHBT, India) and in crops (Oilseed rape (OSR), Deutsche Saatveredelung AG (DSV AG), Germany and corn, Krishidhan Research Foundation Private Limited, India). In the end, nine different genes/gene combinations from plants growing in high altitude were transformed in 14 independent Arabidopsis lines, 6 genes in crops (OSR).

Growth of these genetically modified plants in mild drought stress conditions was analysed with state-of-the-art plant phenotyping technologies at Forschungszentrum Juelich with image analysis methods to quantify a drought tolerance mediated by the transgene. All nine different genes or combinations of genes were investigated in the model plant Arabidopsis for improvement of growth under mild drought stress; an improved drought tolerance could not be detected. Three lines expressing the transgenes in OSR have been characterised for growth under mild drought stress, also not showing significant changes indicating drought tolerance. To characterise the growth in extreme drought stress, novel technologies have been developed to quantify changes in morphology (Arabidopsis), or yellowing of the leaves (oilseed rape) in extreme drought stress, as it occurs especially in India. The three transgenic rapeseed lines were investigated for changes in yellowing during drought stress, but no improvement of drought tolerance by the transgenes was observed.

However, physiological and biochemical analyses showed that transgenic arabidopsis overexpressing CsTLP improved drought tolerance. Transgenic Arabidopsis overexpressing a transcription factor RaWRKY exhibited improvement in seed yield. Transgenic arabidopsis co-over-expressing PaSOD and RaAPX showed improved lignification of the vascular tissue that was associated with improvement of stress tolerance. Transcriptome of Potentilla atrosanguinea was deciphered and also using the Caragana jubata, project consortium solved a long standing question on the molecular mechanism of high altitude plants which makes them to thrive in cold desert at high altitude. Promoters of several stress responsive genes were cloned from Rheum australe.

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), an important grain legume crop of high nutritive value, is mostly grown in low-input and on residual moisture in Indian and semi-arid regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. India is the largest producer and consumer of chickpea. However India imports at least 40% of the international chickpea production.

Due to insufficient rainfall in arid and semi-arid growing areas, the crop often suffers from drought. Terminal drought globally is the major constraint for chickpea production. In the past, breeding efforts to improve drought tolerance have been hindered due to its quantitative genetic basis and our poor understanding of the physiological basis of yield under water-limited conditions. Recent advances in chickpea genomics including the genome sequence, unraveled gene networks and genetic variation controlling valuable traits in elite breeding populations. This project explored the resources developed (eg. in a different project, ICRISAT produced >400,000 ESTs from chickpea genotypes using next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, with the help of expertise available at University of Frankfurt / GenXPro in Germany and ICRISAT/BenchBio in India to identify candidate genes for drought tolerance in chickpea.

In this context, a transcriptome assembly (ca. 60,000 contigs) was generated and 3,000 dehydration stress-responsive genes involved in major drought-stress signalling cascades were identified. Robust drought-responsive candidate genes were identified from MACE libraries and 50 qRT-PCR assays for drought responsive candidate genes were studied. Furthermore, KASPar assays were developed for 2,005 SNPs and a high density molecular map of chickpea comprising 1,328 loci was developed. In addition, an Integrated SNP Mining and Utilization (ISMU) pipeline, a computational tool for identifying SNPs in NGS data sets was developed. This project eventually helped to enhance breeding efficiency for developing superior chickpea varieties with higher yield under rainfed conditions.

Environmental stresses are a primary cause of loss of productivity of agricultural crops across the world. Enhanced production of Reactive Oxygen Intermediates (ROIs) during phases of environmental stress pose a serious threat to survival of plants. Efficiency of the ROI scavenging mechanisms in a plant is an important determinant of its tolerance for different environmental stresses.

This project aims at over-expressing genes involved in the ascorbate-glutathione pathway in crop plants to deactivate ROI molecules and protect plant cells from oxidative damage. The project also seeks to over express ABA catabolism genes for regulating the expression levels of plant stress hormone ABA. Project aims to improve tolerance to drought alone or to a combination of drought and heat stresses by improving the assimilation rate at critical stages such as anthesis, fertilization and onset of seed development by manipulating ABA signaling events. Simultaneous efforts will be made to tackle secondary effects such as stress-mediated cell death by creating an efficient scavenging system of reactive oxygen intermediates (ROIs) under combined heat and drought stress through gene pyramiding. Plants use Ascorbate-glutathione cycle for scavenging reactive oxygen intermediates in multiple redox reactions to prevent cellular damage. The project team has successfully cloned entire Ascorbate-glutathione pathway encoding genes into a single plant transformation vector and generated putative transgenic maize plants in India and barley plants in Germany. The analysis of these transgenic lines for transgene integration, expression and stress tolerance is now underway.

Maize transgenics were developed using the construct having five genes viz.sod, apx, dhr, mdhr and gr which play the key role in ascorbated-glutathione pathway and also with two genes construct viz., rpk and nced which play key role in ABA pathway. Both of the transgenic lines were thoroughly screened and characterized by using physiological, biochemical and molecular methods in field and lab levels. Gene expression was tested at both DNA and RNA levels and southern analyses were carried out to assess the copy numbers. Multiple insertions were observed in lines developed with five gene construct. Hence they were back crossed with Wt for getting lines having single insertions. Single copy insertions were observed in line developed with the construct having two gene cassette with rpk and nced genes. Selected elite lines were tested in field by inducing the abiotic stress by not administering the water in pots. Transgenics could survive more number of days when compared to the control plants.

These two different lines of transgenics having Ascorbate-glutothione pathway genes in one and ABA pathway genes in the other are more important to survive in the severe drought conditions. The pyramiding of all these genes into plants by breeding programme helps a lot to have the improved tolerance to drought alone or to a combination if drought and heat stresses by having the genes which play key roles in two important biochemical pathways involved in abiotic stress management.