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Reduced stomatal density in bread wheat leads to increased water-use efficiency.

ABSTRACT: Wheat is a staple crop, frequently cultivated in water-restricted environments. Improving crop water-use efficiency would be desirable if grain yield can be maintained. We investigated whether a decrease in wheat stomatal density via the manipulation of epidermal patterning factor (EPF) gene expression could improve water-use efficiency. Our results show that severe reductions in stomatal density in EPF-overexpressing wheat plants have a detrimental outcome on yields. However, wheat plants with a more moderate reduction in stomatal density (i.e. <50% reduction in stomatal density on leaves prior to tillering) had yields indistinguishable from controls, coupled with an increase in intrinsic water-use efficiency. Yields of these moderately reduced stomatal density plants were also comparable with those of control plants under conditions of drought and elevated CO2. Our data demonstrate that EPF-mediated control of wheat stomatal development follows that observed in other grasses, and we identify the potential of stomatal density as a tool for breeding wheat plants that are better able to withstand water-restricted environments without yield loss.

SUBMITTER: Dunn J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6760291 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Reduced stomatal density in bread wheat leads to increased water-use efficiency.

Dunn Jessica J Hunt Lee L Afsharinafar Mana M Meselmani Moaed Al MA Mitchell Alice A Howells Rhian R Wallington Emma E Fleming Andrew J AJ Gray Julie E JE

Journal of experimental botany 20190901 18

Wheat is a staple crop, frequently cultivated in water-restricted environments. Improving crop water-use efficiency would be desirable if grain yield can be maintained. We investigated whether a decrease in wheat stomatal density via the manipulation of epidermal patterning factor (EPF) gene expression could improve water-use efficiency. Our results show that severe reductions in stomatal density in EPF-overexpressing wheat plants have a detrimental outcome on yields. However, wheat plants with ...[more]

PMID: 31172183

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Project description:Nitrogen (N) is one of the primary macronutrients required for crop growth and yield. This nutrient is especially limiting wheat yields in the dry and low fertile agro-ecologies having low N in the root zone soil strata. Moreover, majority of farmers in India and South Asia are small to marginal with meagre capacity to invest in costly nitrogen fertilizers. Therefore, there is an immense need to identify lines that use nitrogen efficiently. A set of 50 diverse wheat genotypes consisting of indigenous germplasm lines (05), cultivars released for commercial cultivation (23) and selected elite lines from CIMMYT nurseries (22) were evaluated in an alpha-lattice design with two replications, a six-rowed plot of 2.5m length for 24 agro morphological, physiological and NUE related traits during two consecutive crop seasons in an N-depleted precision field under two different N levels of 50%-N50 (T1) and 100%-N100 (T2) of recommended N, i.e., 100 kg/ha. Analysis of variance revealed significant genetic variation among genotypes for all the traits studied. About 11.36% yield reduction was observed at reduced N levels. Significant correlations among NUE traits and yield component traits were observed which indicated pivotal role of N remobilization to the grain in enhancing yield levels. Among N-insensitive genotypes identified based on their yielding ability at low N levels, UASBW13356, UASBW13358, UASBW13354, UASBW13357 and KRL1-4 showed their inherent genotypic plasticity toward N application. The genotypes with more yield and high to moderate NUtE can be used as parents for the breeding of N efficient genotypes for marginal agro-ecologies. Low N tolerant genotypes identified from the current investigation may be further utilized in the identification of genomic regions responsible for NUE and its deployment in wheat breeding programs. The comprehensive data of 24 traits under different nitrogen levels for diverse genotypes from India and global sources (mainly CIMMYT) should be useful for supporting breeding for NUE and thus will be of great help for small and marginal farmers in India and South Asia.

Dataset Information

Reduced stomatal density in bread wheat leads to increased water-use efficiency.

Publications

Reduced stomatal density in bread wheat leads to increased water-use efficiency.

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