Spain
December 9, 2025
- The project will investigate how plants respond to cold and how they can be better adapted to both mild winters and sudden freezes.
- Designing tools towards more environmentally resilient crops is key to maintaining stable food production in the face of climate change.
The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded one of its prestigious Consolidator Grants to Julia Qüesta, CSIC researcher and group leader of the Epigenetics and plant development laboratory at CRAG. Her project “tuneCHILL - Regulatory mechanisms underlying chilling responses: towards the design of climate-smart plants” will investigate how plants respond to cold, with the goal of supporting the development of more climate-resilient crops.
Increasing temperature instability due to the climate crisis—such as warmer winters and unexpected frost events—poses a major threat to global agriculture. Temperate plants naturally acquire freezing tolerance through a process called cold acclimation, triggered by the gradual cooling of autumn and early winter. However, as winters become milder, this adaptation is disrupted, leaving crops more exposed to sudden freezes. Understanding and addressing this vulnerability is essential to maintaining stable food production in the face of climate change.
The tuneCHILL project aims to uncover strategies that can induce cold acclimation at higher-than-normal temperatures, helping plants prepare for frost even in milder winters. Dr. Qüesta and her team will apply transcriptional and epigenetic approaches to reprogram chilling-responsive gene networks, conducting research in both the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and the crop model Fragaria vesca (woodland strawberry). The project also seeks to identify biostimulants capable of triggering cold acclimation without exposure to low temperatures, opening the door to new biotechnological applications.
By creating actionable molecular tools to strengthen plant resilience, tuneCHILL will contribute to the development of climate-smart crops, supporting sustainable agriculture and global food security in an era of increasing environmental uncertainty.
ERC has announced today the awarding of 349 Consolidator Grants to young scientists and academics from universities and research centres in 25 EU Member States and associated countries. This is one of the most competitive calls in the organization's history, with a record number of 3121 applications.
Project details:
Call: ERC-2025-COG
Proposal number: 101229978
Proposal acronym: tuneCHILL
Proposal title: “Regulatory mechanisms underlying chilling responses: towards the design of climate-smart plants”
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