The project aims at studying biological control agents and plant growth promoting microorganisms. Their exploitation in sustainable strategies can reduce pressures on

ecosystem services and natural resources, on which human societies will increasingly

depend. The development of such sustainable strategies is urgently needed. Pesticides use

is increasingly regulated in the European Union and the production of fertilizers is

ecologically costly and relies on limited natural resources. To this end the genomic and transcriptomic analysis of Clonostachys and a comparison of the underlying molecular mechanisms for biological control in Clonostachys and Trichoderma will be performed. Although they belong to distantly related families of the Hypocreales, both possess traits that include plurivorous life styles such as mycoparasitism/mycotrophy and parasitism on animal pests of plants. On the basis of the proposed research, new biological control agents and plant growth promoters could be discovered. Also, it may lead at better understanding the underlying mechanisms of interactions between beneficial microorganisms and their hosts, which is a prerequisite for their exploitation in sustainable production systems.