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Italy and Israel share a similar Mediterranean type climate, where major areas of cultivated grapevine are in desertification-prone regions or regions subjected to recent events related to climate change characterized. While Israel was exporting wine thousands of years ago and has renewed its activities only recently, Italy has a thousand year continuum of experience in viticulture and wine-making.

 

 

Today the availability of extensive genetic data, the genome sequence and tailored biotechnological tools makes grape a valuable crop species for genomics analyses and for the identification of genetic components controlling agronomic performance to develop novel breeding strategies. The combination of molecular tools and advances in the agronomy and fertigation technologies makes a solid basis for the enhancement of grapevine crop yield and quality that will be one of the focus in the grapevine symposium.

Fait Metabolomics Lab
Shivta ruins, ancient winery press

Grape plantation in the desert

Old winery at the ancient (100- 800 A.D), Shivta ruins

The projects in the lab reflect, on the one, the motivation to improve crop nutritional-value/yield and, on the other, the interest in plant-environment interaction, natural variability of metabolic traits and metabolic regulation.

The lab uses metabolomics, genomics and bioinformatics tools to investigate plant metabolism and development in grape, wheat and tomato. 

Aaron Fait

Aaron Fait

Shimon Rachmilevitch

Shimon Rachmilevitch

The main focus of the laboratory is on whole plant ecophysiology and acclimation to abiotic stress. Among the projects: Multidisciplinary study on grapevines including plant physiology, metabolic profiling, and spectroscopy; Role of dew in desert plants, root orders in the water and nutrient uptake; Carbon and water relations associated with rain and temperature gradients; are major research areas of the lab.

French Associates Institute for Agriculture & Biotechnology of Drylands

Jacob Blaustein Inststitute for Desert Research

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Sede Boqer Campus,

84990, ISRAEL

Shimon Lab

Aaron Fait

If you didn't receive the update sent on October 16, please contact us at graciousymposium@gmail.com

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