Skip to main content
ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Pullman, Washington » WHGQ » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #350017
Title: Differential dynamic changes of reduced trait model for analyzing the plastic response to drought phases: a case study in spring wheat

Author
item SANAD, MARWA - Washington State University
item SMERTENKO, A. - Washington State University
item Garland-Campbell, Kimberly

Submitted to: Frontiers in Plant Science
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/1/2019
Publication Date: 4/26/2019
Citation: Sanad, M.N., Smertenko, A., Garland Campbell, K.A. 2019. Differential dynamic changes of reduced trait model for analyzing the plastic response to drought phases: a case study in spring wheat. Frontiers in Plant Science. 10:504. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2019.00504.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2019.00504

Interpretive Summary: Drought events are common in plant growth and likely to become more prevalent, yet selection of new cultivars with better tolerance to drought remains difficult. These difficulties occur because drought can occur at different times in the plant life cycle and can be constant or intermittent. We investigated several phenotypes and identified a trait called peroxisome proliferation that is associated with recovery from drought. This traits can be assayed with relative ease using a cell staining protocol and will be useful to determine the response of plants to drought during the growing phase.

Technical Abstract: Current limited water availability due to climate changes results in severe drought stress and desiccation in plants. Phenotyping drought tolerance remains challenging. In particular, our knowledge about the discriminating power of traits for capturing a plastic phenotype in high-throughput settings is scant. The study is designed to investigate the differential performance and broad sense heritability of a battery set of morphological, physiological, and cellular traits to understand the adaptive phenotypic response to drought in spring wheat during the tillering stage. The potential of peroxisome abundance to predict the adaptive response under severe drought was assessed using a high-throughput technique for peroxisome quantification in plants. The research dissected the dynamic changes of some phenological traits during three successive phases of drought using two contrasting genotypes of adaptability to drought. The research demonstrates 5 main findings: (1) a reduction of the overall dimension of the phenological traits for robust phenotyping of the adaptive performance under drought; (2) the abundance of peroxisomes in response to drought correlate negatively with grain yield; (4) the efficiency of ROS homeostasis through peroxisome proliferation which seems to be genetically programmed; and (5) the dynamics of ROS homeostasis seems to be timing dependent mechanism, the tolerant genotype response is earlier than the susceptible genotype. This work will contribute to the identification of robust plastic phenotypic tools and the understanding of the mechanisms for adaptive behavior under drought conditions.