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ARS Home » Plains Area » Houston, Texas » Children's Nutrition Research Center » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #406883
Research Project: Nutritional Role of Phytochemicals

Location: Children's Nutrition Research Center

Title: Generating reproducing anoxia conditions for plant phenotyping

Author
item MATHEW, INY - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item RHEIN, HORMAT - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item GREEN, ARDAWNA - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item HIRSCHI, KENDAL - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)

Submitted to: Bio-protocol
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/22/2023
Publication Date: 2/5/2023
Citation: Mathew, I.E., Rhein, H.S., Green, A.J., Hirschi, K.D. 2023. Generating reproducing anoxia conditions for plant phenotyping. Bio-protocol. 13(3). https://doi.org/10.21769/BioProtoc.4603.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21769/BioProtoc.4603

Interpretive Summary: Flooding is agriculturally important, costing millions of dollars of crop losses yearly. Scientists would like to study plant flooding responses, but it is often difficult to reproduce flooding conditions in a lab. When plants lack oxygen, this is part of the flooding stress. Here we develop an assay to remove oxygen from the environment and stress plants. We demonstrate that this stress is similar to flooding conditions and is easy to reproduce in the lab. This is an important finding, as it will make studying crop flooding less complicated and help engineering flooding-tolerant crops.

Technical Abstract: Based on the availability of oxygen, plant growth environment can be normoxic (normal environment), hypoxic (reduced oxygen,< 21%), or anoxic (complete depletion of oxygen). Hypoxic/anoxic environment is created when a plant is exposed to stresses such as submergence, flooding, or pathogen attack. Survival of the plants following stress conditions is in part dependent on their ability to overcome the stress induced by anoxia/hypoxia conditions. This shows the need for the development of strategies for understanding the mechanisms involved in plant tolerance to anoxia. Previous studies have employed different methods for establishing an anerobic environment. Here, we describe a simple method for creating anoxic environment using an anaerobic atmosphere generation bag.