Prehistoric soil microbes studied in bid to climate-proof today’s crops

A four-year project aims to discover whether plants, soil and bacteria from the past can help current crops survive changing weather conditions.

Plant biologists in Edinburgh are set to work with European scientists to determine whether microbes from hundreds of thousands of years ago can help present-day plant species adapt to climate change.

The Heriot-Watt University team has been awarded £500,000 by Horizon Europe, a European Union scientific research initiative, to work on the four-year project.

The scheme, called Tolerate, is examining ancient soil samples extracted from deep below the Arctic.

Dr Ross Alexander, a plant molecular biologist at Heriot-Watt, said: “The Tolerate team is using samples from the palaeolithic period, around 100-200,000 years ago, because the planet was warming then, much like now.