Location: The group has its general headquarters at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University San Pablo CEU, Madrid, Spain. All members belong to the Department of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resources, Section of Plant Biology and Ecology.

The Rizosphere:

"The rhizosphere is the soil under the direct influence of plant roots. This ecosystem is inhabited by microorganisms that strongly influence plant’s health, affecting contents of compounds with biotechnological interest: in agriculture, foods and pharmaceutical compounds."

The main objective of our research is to improve plant productivity together with improvement of local soil characteristics. This improvement is to be shown in plant’s nutritional properties useful for human health, ensuring environmentally friendly sustainable production and maintaining natural resources of terrestrial ecosystems at the same time.

Due to their sessile nature, plants have developed a huge number of adaptative strategies to survive to changing environmental conditions. At the physiological level, these “strategies” summarize in the term secondary metabolism, and the enormous variability of secondary metabolites indicate the relevance for plant survival. Many of these metabolites protect plants to biotic (microorganisms, fungi..) or abiotic stress (drought, cold, heat..), and at the same time, serve humans for different purposes (healing, vitamins…). One of the key objectives of the group is to enhance levels of secondary metabolites with a double objective, first, for pharmaceutical purposes and second, to improve nutritional value of foods.

Also resulting from their sessile nature, plants affect the soil they inhabit. By releasing easily available carbon sources through roots, soil microorganisms are affected. Soil fertility and its perdurance rely heavily on these microorganisms, which were present in soils before plants did. Since they share the same ecosystem, plants have integrated some microorganisms in their systems, and their own survival and productivity are compromised in their absence. Another key objective of the group is to study and preserve microbial diversity of soils and try to unravel plant-microorganisms interactions to improve plant productivity as well as soil fertility.