Salma Balazadeh is Professor of Molecular Stress Physiology of Plants at the Georg-August University of Göttingen, Germany. She studied Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Tehran and completed her PhD in 2008 at the Max-Planck-Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology (MPIMP) and the University of Potsdam, Germany. She subsequently held group leader positions at the University of Potsdam and MPIMP.

From 2019 to 2025, she served as an Associate Professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands before moving to Göttingen in 2025.

Her research aims to uncover the molecular mechanisms that enable plants and crops to withstand environmental stresses, particularly heat and drought.

---

Keynote Details

Monday 29 June

Symposium 4: Developing stress resilient crops

Drought is one of the most detrimental environmental factors affecting crop production, thereby jeopardizing food security for a growing global population. Despite its importance, generating drought-resilient plants is not trivial. This is largely due to the complex, multifactorial nature of drought tolerance, the inherent growth-stress trade-offs, and the strong environmental and genetic dependency of individual traits.

Plants activate complex genetic, physiological, and biochemical responses to cope with drought. Beyond these intrinsic pathways, plant-associated microorganisms, particularly plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB), have emerged as modulators of stress resilience.

In this presentation, I will discuss two distinct transcriptional routes to drought adaptation. First, I will present our work on a NAC transcription factor that confers strong tolerance under severe drought stress through intrinsic reprogramming of stress and growth-related pathways. Second, I will introduce a root endophytic bacterium that enhances drought tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana and wheat (Triticum aestivum) via activation of an ERF-dependent regulatory module and associated modulation of root system architecture. I will discuss the molecular mechanisms underlying these regulatory strategies.