Home > Articles > Published articles > Drought resistance by engineering plant tissue-specific responses |
Date: | 2020 |
Abstract: | Drought is the primary cause of agricultural loss globally, and represents a major threat to food security. Currently, plant biotechnology stands as one of the most promising fields when it comes to developing crops that are able to produce high yields in water-limited conditions. From studies of Arabidopsis thaliana whole plants, the main response mechanisms to drought stress have been uncovered, and multiple drought resistance genes have already been engineered into crops. So far, most plants with enhanced drought resistance have displayed reduced crop yield, meaning that there is still a need to search for novel approaches that can uncouple drought resistance from plant growth. Our laboratory has recently shown that the receptors of brassinosteroid (BR) hormones use tissue-specific pathways to mediate different developmental responses during root growth. In Arabidopsis, we found that increasing BR receptors in the vascular plant tissues confers resistance to drought without penalizing growth, opening up an exceptional opportunity to investigate the mechanisms that confer drought resistance with cellular specificity in plants. In this review, we provide an overview of the most promising phenotypical drought traits that could be improved biotechnologically to obtain drought-tolerant cereals. In addition, we discuss how current genome editing technologies could help to identify and manipulate novel genes that might grant resistance to drought stress. In the upcoming years, we expect that sustainable solutions for enhancing crop production in water-limited environments will be identified through joint efforts. |
Grants: | Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad BIO2016-78150-P European Commission 683163 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2017/SGR-718 Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad SEV-2015-0533 |
Note: | Altres ajuts: CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya |
Rights: | Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. |
Language: | Anglès |
Document: | Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada |
Subject: | Drought ; Arabidopsis ; Cereals ; Genome editing ; Cell-specific regulation |
Published in: | Frontiers in plant science, Vol. 10 (January 2020) , art. 1676, ISSN 1664-462X |
19 p, 1.4 MB |