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Drought Stress Pre-Treatment Triggers Thermotolerance Acquisition in Durum Wheat

ABSTRACT: Durum wheat is strongly affected by climatic constraints such as high temperatures and drought, which frequently lead to yield reduction. Damages due to high temperatures are related to plant thermotolerance, a trait determined by two components: basal and acquired thermotolerance. In this study, the effect of drought and heat stress imposed singularly or sequentially was investigated in ten durum wheat cultivars (cvs) at the physiological and molecular level. The traits analyzed were cell membrane stability, relative water content, proline content, and expression level of several genes for heat shock proteins (HSPs). Our results indicate that drought priming can induce the acquisition of thermotolerance in most cultivars already classified as able to acquire thermotolerance by heat pre-treatment. Proline accumulation was correlated to cell membrane stability, meaning that the most thermotolerant cvs were able to accumulate higher levels of proline. Acquired thermotolerance is also due to the activation of HSP gene expression; similarly, pre-treatment with water stress was able to activate HSPs expression. The results reported indicate that water stress plays an important role in inducing thermotolerance, comparable to mild heat stress pre-treatment. This is the first report on the effect of drought stress on the acquisition of thermotolerance.

SUBMITTER: De Pascali M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9323298 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Durum wheat is susceptible to terminal drought which can greatly decrease grain yield. Breeding to improve crop yield is hampered by inadequate knowledge of how the physiological and metabolic changes caused by drought are related to gene expression. To gain better insight into mechanisms defining resistance to water stress we studied the physiological and transcriptome responses of three durum breeding lines varying for yield stability under drought. Parents of a mapping population (Lahn x Cham1) and a recombinant inbred line (RIL2219) showed lowered flag leaf relative water content, water potential and photosynthesis when subjected to controlled water stress time transient experiments over a six-day period. RIL2219 lost less water and showed constitutively higher stomatal conductance, photosynthesis, transpiration, abscisic acid content and enhanced osmotic adjustment at equivalent leaf water compared to parents, thus defining a physiological strategy for high yield stability under water stress. Parallel analysis of the flag leaf transcriptome under stress uncovered global trends of early changes in regulatory pathways, reconfiguration of primary and secondary metabolism and lowered expression of transcripts in photosynthesis in all three lines. Differences in the number of genes, magnitude and profile of their expression response were also established amongst the lines with a high number belonging to regulatory pathways. In addition, we documented a large number of genes showing constitutive differences in leaf transcript expression between the genotypes at control non-stress conditions. Principal Coordinates Analysis uncovered a high level of structure in the transcriptome response to water stress in each wheat line suggesting genome-wide co-ordination of transcription. Utilising a systems-based approach of analysing the integrated wheat's response to water stress, in terms of biological robustness theory, the findings suggest that each durum line transcriptome responded to water stress in a genome-specific manner which contributes to an overall different strategy of resistance to water stress.

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Drought Stress Pre-Treatment Triggers Thermotolerance Acquisition in Durum Wheat

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