Foliar abscisic acid-to-ethylene accumulation and response regulate shoot growth sensitivity to mild drought in wheat

Valluru, Ravi and Davies, William John and Reynolds, Matthew and Dodd, Ian Charles (2016) Foliar abscisic acid-to-ethylene accumulation and response regulate shoot growth sensitivity to mild drought in wheat. Frontiers in Plant Science, 7: 461. ISSN 1664-462X

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Abstract

Although, plant hormones play an important role in adjusting growth in response to environmental perturbation, the relative contributions of abscisic acid (ABA) and ethylene remain elusive. Using six spring wheat genotypes differing for stress tolerance, we show that young seedlings of the drought-tolerant (DT) group maintained or increased shoot dry weight (SDW) while the drought-susceptible (DS) group decreased SDW in response to mild drought. Both the DT and DS groups increased endogenous ABA and ethylene concentrations under mild drought compared to control. The DT and DS groups exhibited different SDW response trends, whereby the DS group decreased while the DT group increased SDW, to increased concentrations of ABA and ethylene under mild drought, although both groups decreased ABA/ethylene ratio under mild drought albeit at different levels. We concluded that SDW of the DT and DS groups might be distinctly regulated by specific ABA:ethylene ratio. Further, a foliar-spray of low concentrations (0.1 μM) of ABA increased shoot relative growth rate (RGR) in the DS group while ACC (1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid, ethylene precursor) spray increased RGR in both groups compared to control. Furthermore, the DT group accumulated a significantly higher galactose while a significantly lower maltose in the shoot compared to the DS group. Taken all together, these results suggest an impact of ABA, ethylene, and ABA:ethylene ratio on SDW of wheat seedlings that may partly underlie a genotypic variability of different shoot growth sensitivities to drought among crop species under field conditions. We propose that phenotyping based on hormone accumulation, response and hormonal ratio would be a viable, rapid, and an early–stage selection tool aiding genotype selection for stress tolerance. © 2016 Valluru, Davies, Reynolds and Dodd.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Frontiers in Plant Science
Additional Information:
Copyright © 2016 Valluru, Davies, Reynolds and Dodd. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1100/1110
Subjects:
?? abscisic aciddroughtethylenegrowth sensitivityhormonal ratiomild droughtplant science ??
ID Code:
79344
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
07 Jun 2016 09:06
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
04 Jan 2024 00:16