Proeulia auraria (eulia de los frutales=EF) es una especie nativa que ataca la mayoría de los frutales (carozos, pomáceas, vides, berries, etc) convirtiéndose en una plaga cada vez más relevante. Su fenología incluye 2 generaciones por temporada; la primera afecta brotación y floración, y la segunda cuaja-cosecha. Las larvas consumen follaje, flores y frutos (hasta un 30%). Además, es la quinta o sexta plaga cuarentenaria en exportaciones chilenas, causando todas las temporadas abundantes rechazos (entre 1 a 9% del total; fuente SAG). Ello hace indispensable controlar EF con aplicaciones de insecticidas residuales. Las ventanas de aplicación deben ser precisadas para optimizar el control y el uso de plaguicidas (ovicidas o larvicidas). Por tanto, es necesario predecir eventos críticos con modelos fenológicos, lo cual no se ha desarrollado contra esta especie. Los modelos requieren estimar umbrales térmicos (superior e inferior, UTS y UTI respectivamente) y la acumulación térmica (grados-día o ∑GD) por estadio. El UTI y la ∑GD se estimaron previamente (2010-2012) para EF en un proyecto RED DE PRONÓSTICOS FITOSANITARIOS RPF del SAG (ID-6que 12-2737-SE10), evaluando 5 regímenes de temperatura entre 13 y 28°C. Sin embargo, no se estableció el UTS y el modelo preliminar que derivó del estudio, se desvía parcialmente de lo observado. La presente propuesta de la U. de Chile plantea diseñar un sistema de alerta temprana de precisión para el control eficiente de EF, para lo cual se verificará/modificará el UTI y la ∑GD por estadio, y se determinará el UTS (con modelos no lineales), criando cohortes de los diferentes estados del insecto en 4 regímenes de temperatura adicionales (7, 10, 31, 33°C), en condiciones similares a las usadas en el estudio previo, lo que mejorará la calidad de los ajustes. Luego, se determinará la forma de cálculo de los GD, contrastando las observaciones de campo con la predicción del modelo, tanto para el corte vertical como el horizontal, y se seleccionará aquél que tenga mayor correlación, no realizado en el estudio previo. De la misma manera se determinará un Biofix o evento que indica cuándo se debe
iniciar el cálculo de GD en campo. Estos modelos también requieren estimar con la mayor precisión el calor experimentado por los insectos. La propuesta plantea usar sensores de temperatura en distintas posiciones de la copa, de 4 especies frutales hospederas de EF, para determinar un factor de corrección que permita ajustar el modelo de GD para EF. Esta información permitirá desarrollar algoritmos con los que se harán las predicciones del Sistema de Alerta del SAG (RPF), generando pronósticos a 8 días. Para hacer accesible el sistema, se aprovechará el Portal Productor del RPF-SAG, para ofrecer el servicio de alerta temprana de Eulia a los productores.
El sistema de alerta para EF quedará programado y disponible para que todos los usuarios, sin costo, puedan dibujar los polígonos a nivel de cuartel y variedad para programar sus alertas y controles químicos, rompiendo la brecha de cobertura y acceso a información meteorológica, y de recomendaciones de manejo, que existe entre productores.
La transferencia tecnológica a los usuarios finales, se realizará mediante actividades de capacitación, seminarios, días de campo y un manual de uso que quedará a su disposición. La sustentabilidad del proyecto estará garantizada por la mantención del servicio en la plataforma RPF, por el SAG.

[proyecto ejecutado en 4 años, por haberse acogido a extensión de pandemia]

Fluid impacts are present in a large variety of situations. For instance, the craters formed by rain–drops impacting the soil are relevant in agricultural applications. Also, wave–impact can damage coastal structures, and impact of sloshing–waves may produce over–turning of trucks or vessels that transport fluids. Therefore, the relevance (I would say the impact) of fluid impact goes from industry to environmental sciences. And also because of its beauty and scientific challenges, fluid impact is currently (and largely) studied by communities of physicist and applied mathematicians.

As the field of fluid impact is vast, we focus in one particular problem: the bottle flip challenge, as (1) it provides more contoured problems to be tackled experimentally during the time limits of this proposal; (2) it could give insights about other relevant and applied problems; (3) as it already received press coverage worldwide, it is likely to have a large visibility of the results obtained.

The bottle flip challenge is a game consisting in spinning a plastic bottle partially filled with water, in order to make it landing vertically after completing a single turn, or more. In recent years the challenge received huge attention in social media and some press coverage including Las Ultimas Noticias. In our opinion, such effervescence for a physical phenomenon relies in the counter-intuitiveness of the trick: as the bottle is turning, one expect it to continue turning until falling down, instead of the abrupt and stable stop in a vertical position that actually occurs.
Some of the videos, magazine publication and the available physics article (Dekker et al., 2018), focus their attention in the conservation of angular momentum and the variations of momentum of inertia to explain the successful landing. Dekker et al. recognize that the physics of water sloshing is highly complex in itself and approached the problem by the side of classical mechanics. What we propose here, is indeed to take the challenge of fluid dynamics to carry conserved-quantities explanations to a greater depth.

Our starting point is a high–speed camera recording of a successful throw and landing. There, one can observe at least two key fluid-dynamical events that contribute to the vertical stabilization of the bottle: (1) the impact of a water jet into the wall, strongly reducing the bottle-angular-momentum during the free traveling of the system, and (2) a violent redistribution of water taking place at landing, where water captures an important amount of the kinetic energy carried by the bottle. After describing these two key events, we can already summarize this proposal as a committed experimental study of both events, plus an effort to translate these ideas into a (engineering inspired) sloshing dynamics application.

We propose first to study the landing stage asking the following question (Question 1): for a container partially filled with fluid, can fluid motion act as a shock-absorber for the impact?
We propose to perform an experiment where the bottle is rotated on its vertical axis before it is released (also vertically). Then we will study the effect of fluid motion, by simply defining a restitution coefficient (valid at landing impact) and to see when the loss of bottle-energy is maximized. Bottle-energy loss implies fluid-energy absorption: a balance that will be experimentally checked. Maximal loss of bottle-energy indeed ensures greater bottle stability at landing.

Then, we will focus on the effect of water–jet–impact asking Question 2: On which circumstances jet-impact may stabilize a freely rotating container?
On one side, we will perform experiments of bottle throwing just as the challenge proposes (that is, throwing the bottle by hand). Also, we will construct a quasi-2D experiment, to perform computer-controlled rotations of the bottle in order to produce jet–impact on the bottle walls. In both cases, we will study angular momentum transfer and deviations from bottles without impact by filming with a high-speed camera and applying mass conservation models.

In order to return to the general problem of fluid impact, our final question (3) is Can we take advantage of jet-impact to stabilize any moving container?
Here we will apply the previous knowledge to the study a classical configuration exhibiting wave impact: a container subjected to horizontal excitation. After characterizing impact conditions in the solid container, we will study the consequences (in wall acceleration for instance) of having a freely moving wall.

Los laboratorios de fabricación digital son espacios que cuentan con maquinaria y personal capacitado para facilitar el diseño y desarrollo de prototipos y para promover la innovación en productos, procesos y servicios. Se conciben como laboratorios que facilitan herramientas de fabricación avanzada y capacidades a la comunidad en general, pudiendo ser más enfocados a emprendedores, empresas e institutos de investigación. Una característica común es que sirven como plataforma para estimular el aprendizaje y la invención en la comunidad. Las máquinas y capacidades técnicas instaladas en estos laboratorios brindan la oportunidad de encontrar soluciones innovadoras a problemas comunes y ser incubadores de microemprendimientos que resuelvan problemas de forma innovadora y sustentable.

El primer laboratorio de fabricación digital, junto con el concepto FabLab, aparece en el MIT (Massachussets Institute of Technology, Estados Unidos) en el año 2000. Actualmente, existe una red mundial de alrededor de 3000 FabLabs distribuidos en 5 continentes. En Chile se pueden encontrar 17 de estos laboratorios, la mayoría de ellos concentrados en la Región Metropolitana; 2 en la Región del Maule y ninguno en la Región de O’Higgins. La ausencia de un laboratorio regional está en concordancia con estadísticas del año 2016 que reportan apenas 118 m2 de espacios dedicados a innovación en la Región de O’Higgins frente a 27 936 m2 en la Región Metropolitana. En ese contexto, la Región de O’Higgins es la segunda región con menor superficie dedicada a innovación.

La instalación de un laboratorio de fabricación digital en la Región de O’Higgins se identifica como una gran oportunidad para promover la innovación, brindando acceso a equipos y a capacitaciones sobre herramientas de fabricación avanzada a industrias y emprendedores regionales.

The field of remote sensing is experiencing an unprecedented acceleration. Besides the large public programs such as Sentinel (see e.g. https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/missions/sentinel-2), private actors are creating fleets of micro-satellites capable of monitoring of the earth with daily revisits. This abundant and cheap data is creating opportunities for developing novel applications for the monitoring of industrial and agricultural activity. The automatic exploitation of this data is bound to specific application domain knowledge, which requires a mastery of advanced techniques such as computer vision and machine learning, as well as expert knowledge in the field of agriculture. To do this, the team must master earth observation satellites, be able to define the adequate mathematical detection theories, and build on a deep knowledge of satellite image processing, while also including expert knowledge in agriculture. This project aims at uniting competences across the fields of computer vision and machine learning, remote sensing to address emerging applications in agronomy. This project will in addition foster the creation of reproducible research by adopting a reproducible research methodology thus contributing the resulting algorithms to the journal Image Processing On-Line (IPOL). The IPOL journal is an initiative to establish a clear and reproducible state-of-the-art in the domain of image processing and computer vision.

La producción de semillas de sandía en Chile es una de las que genera mayores volúmenes (12,5%) y mejores precios (26 MM U$FOB) de
exportación respecto del total de semillas exportadas. En los últimos 5 años su exportación ha aumentado considerablemente ocupando el
segundo lugar en este mercado. Derivado del procesamiento de los frutos se genera un alto porcentaje de pulpa y cáscara; residuos no
aprovechables como subproducto para otras industrias como cuarta gama y/o farmacéutica. El elevado contenido antioxidantes de la sandía
representa una oportunidad para su extracción y uso en otras industrias. La solución innovadora permitirá reutilizar grandes volúmenes de la
pulpa y cáscara, mitigando su disposición inadecuada y mejorando prácticas agrícolas y biotecnológicas. El objetivo de la propuesta es
desarrollar un paquete tecnológico consistente en tres aplicaciones que permiten valorizar los residuos de cáscara y pulpa de sandía para la
producción de nutracéuticos, bioenmienda de suelos provenientes de relaves mineros, y sustrato para el crecimiento de microorganismos. El
proyecto busca generar innovaciones que promuevan la transformación de los residuos agrícolas, proyectando así nuevos negocios para los
productores hortícolas en la industria de los alimentos dando valor agregado a los residuos derivados del procesamiento de semillas. Los
resultados esperados de esta iniciativa son: Portafolio de al menos 2 ingredientes funcionales (Licopeno y Citrulina) desarrollados y
caracterizados; validación técnica del ingrediente principal (Licopeno o citrulina) con actividad antioxidante; bioenmienda validada en un
entorno operacional (campo), alcanzando el nivel de madurez tecnológica TRL7; análisis de mercado robusto que incluye un plan de
escalamiento técnico de la bioenmienda; medio de cultivo validado en un entorno operacional (empresas), alcanzando el nivel de madurez
tecnológica TRL7; y análisis de mercado robusto que incluye un plan de escalamiento técnico.

Plants, with their two-layered immune system, are equipped to combat pathogen invasion. The first layer, Pattern Triggered Immunity (PTI), is a powerful defense mechanism. It relies on Pattern Recognition Receptors (PRRs) to detect Microbe-Associated Molecular Patterns (MAMPs) from microbes, triggering a robust defense response. This response, including signaling cascades, gene expression changes, and production of antimicrobials and defense hormones, contributes to restricting pathogen colonization. PTI activation can trigger a systemic response known as Induced Systemic Resistance (IRS), enhancing plant defenses throughout the organism and leading to Non-Host-Resistance. The potential of PTI activation to enhance a plant’s overall defensive capacity is a promising strategy to improve crop health. PTI activation at infection sites triggers the production of mobile signals within the plant, which then spread IRS throughout the plant, enhancing its overall defensive capacity. Flg22 and xyn11, two well-known MAMPs, trigger PTI in tomato, activating various defense responses and, interestingly, including IRS in tomatoes and other plants.
Plant roots, often overlooked in discussions of plant immune systems, possess their own immune system, though less potent than leaves. They respond to MAMPs like Flg22 and chitin, but with weaker production of defense chemicals. Despite this difference, roots activate various defenses like PR proteins and callose deposition. Uniquely, roots secrete antifungal secondary metabolites like flavonoids. These root exudates play a crucial role in shaping the surrounding microbiome, attracting beneficial microbes, and possess antimicrobial activity itself. Studies have shown that root exudate composition can be manipulated to influence the soil microbiome and potentially enhance plant growth. This underlines the importance of considering roots in our understanding of plant immune systems, particularly how defense responses are displayed in the root after immune activation in leaves in terms of a systemic immune response. This often overlooked aspect is crucial for a comprehensive understanding of plant immunity.
Plants and microbes communicate two-way, establishing an interaction, by instance, plant root exudates influence the composition of the rhizosphere microbiome, which in turn regulates plant growth and immunity. Research suggests that specific bacteria within the rhizosphere microbiome can enhance plant immunity. In fact, transplanting the microbiome from a resistant tomato variety to a susceptible one improved disease resistance. Understanding this plant-microbiome-soil interaction is crucial for developing sustainable agriculture. Our ongoing research investigates how soil type influences tomato immunity and its connection to the soil microbiome. Preliminary results show that different soil types affect the strength of plant immunity responses, even though the overall bacterial types (phyla) are similar. Interestingly, specific bacterial isolates from a soil type with higher immunity were able to directly trigger plant defense mechanisms. Unraveling the intricate interplay between soil type, the rhizosphere microbiome, and tomato immunity holds the key to unlocking sustainable and resilient agricultural practices.
This proposal aims to investigate the potential of targeted Pattern-Triggered Immunity (PTI) activation in tomato leaves to enhance plant defense against diverse pathogens. We hypothesize that leaf application of microbial elicitors (flg22 and Xyn11) will trigger PTI, leading to changes in root gene expression and root exudate composition. These alterations are expected to enrich beneficial bacteria in the rhizosphere microbiome, ultimately enhancing resistance against both the foliar pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato and the soil-borne pathogen Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici. To achieve this, we have defined three specific objectives: 1) Evaluate the impact of leaf-applied elicitors on pathogen susceptibility, root gene expression, root exudate composition, and soil microbiome composition. 2) Develop synthetic exudates mimicking PTI-activated plants and construct synthetic microbial communities potentially containing beneficial bacteria. 3) Assess the effectiveness of leaf-applied elicitors and synthetic microbial communities on the root microbiome and plant health under field conditions. With this, we aim to elucidate the mechanisms by which leaf-based PTI activation influences root-level processes and shapes the rhizosphere microbiome to enhance tomato plant defense against various pathogens. The findings hold promise for developing novel and sustainable strategies for disease management in tomato production.

Fondo de Innovación para la Competitividad – FIC2023- 6ta región.

Materia investigada: Regulación transcripcional, microbiología, metilaciones, cobre.

Fondequip Mediano EQM230002

Proyecto UOH