A new approach to countering plant environmental stresses

January 27, 2014

Application to the development of stress-tolerant plants using strigolactone

RIKEN CSRS has showed that strigolactone is a positive regulator that can enhance plant tolerance to drought and salt stress. Researchers used Arabidopsis strigolactone-deficient and strigolactoneresponse mutants to study the function of strigolactone in plant response to drought and salt stress. Both the mutants exhibited sensitivity to the stresses, whereas wild-type Arabidopsis plants showed increased stress tolerance when sprayed with strigolactone. The authors demonstrated that strigolactone regulates plant response to drought stress through controling stomatal closure and perhaps also photosynthesis. They further showed that strigolactone, abscisic acid and cytokinin integrate multiple response pathways to regulate plant adaptation to stress.

These findings suggest a new strategy for development of biotechnological methods to improve crop productivity under adverse environmental stress conditions by enhancing strigolactone production and/or strigolactone signaling.

Original article

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA doi: 10.1073/pnas.1322135111

C. V. Ha, M. A. L. -Gonzalez, Y. Osakabe, U. T. Tran, R. Nishiyama, Y. Watanabe, M. Tanaka, M. Seki, S. Yamaguchi, N. V. Dong, K. Y. -Shinozaki, K. Shinozaki, L. Herrera-Estrella, L. -S. P. Tran,

"Positive regulatory role of strigolactone in plant responses to drought and salt stress".

Contact

Son Tran: Unit Leader

Rie Nishiyama: Research Scientist

Chien Van Ha: International Program Associate

Signaling Pathway Research Unit