Plant responses to salt stress involve regulatory networks integrating ion transport, hormonal signaling, and root system architecture remodeling. A key adaptive mechanism is the regulation of sodium (Na⁺) transport by Class 1 HKT1 transporters, which compertamentalize Na⁺ in non-photosynthetic tissues. High HKT1 expression reduces Na+ accumulation in shoots, leading to increased salt tolerance, but simultaneously results in reduced lateral root development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFQuinoa is well-known for high nutritional value and wide adaptability, but it is considered to be heat sensitive. To address that, two tetraploid wild relatives, C. berlandieri and C.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlant Biotechnol J
August 2025
Climate change induces many abiotic stresses, including soil salinity, significantly challenging global agriculture. Salinity stress tolerance (SST) is a complex trait, both physiologically and genetically, and is conferred at various levels of plant functional organization. As both the sustainability and profitability of agricultural production systems are critically dependent on SST, plant breeders are trying to design and develop salinity-smart crop plants capable of thriving under high salinity conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoil salinity is one of the major threats to agricultural productivity worldwide. Salt stress exposure alters root and shoots growth rates, thereby affecting overall plant performance. While past studies have extensively documented the effect of salt stress on root elongation and shoot development separately, here we take an innovative approach by examining the coordination of root and shoot growth under salt stress conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe occurrence of external L-glutamate at the Arabidopsis root tip triggers major changes in root architecture, but the mechanism of -L-Glu sensing is unknown. Members of the family of GLUTAMATE RECEPTOR-LIKE (GLR) proteins are known to act as amino acid-gated Ca-permeable channels and to have signalling roles in diverse plant processes. To investigate the possible role of GLRs in the root architectural response to L-Glu, we screened a collection of mutants with T-DNA insertions in each of the 20 AtGLR genes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFQuinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) is an important crop for the future challenges of food and nutrient security. Deep characterization of quinoa diversity is needed to support the agronomic improvement and adaptation of quinoa as its worldwide cultivation expands. In this study, we report the construction of chromosome-scale genome assemblies of eight quinoa accessions covering the range of phenotypic and genetic diversity of both lowland and highland quinoas.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Plant Sci
September 2024
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and in particular modern machine learning (ML) algorithms during the last decade has been met with great interest in the agricultural industry. While undisputedly powerful, their main drawback remains the need for sufficient and diverse training data. The collection of real datasets and their annotation are the main cost drivers of ML developments, and while promising results on synthetically generated training data have been shown, their generation is not without difficulties on their own.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoil salinity is a major environmental stressor affecting agricultural productivity worldwide. Understanding plant responses to salt stress is crucial for developing resilient crop varieties. Wild relatives of cultivated crops, such as wild tomato, Solanum pimpinellifolium, can serve as a useful resource to further expand the resilience potential of the cultivated germplasm, S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe rice Zaxinone Synthase (ZAS) gene encodes a carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase (CCD) that forms the apocarotenoid growth regulator zaxinone in vitro. Here, we generated and characterized constitutive ZAS-overexpressing rice lines, to better understand ZAS role in determining zaxinone content and regulating growth and architecture. ZAS overexpression enhanced endogenous zaxinone level, promoted root growth and increased the number of productive tillers, leading to about 30% higher grain yield per plant.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPitseed goosefoot (Chenopodium berlandieri) is a free-living North American member of an allotetraploid complex that includes the Andean pseudocereal quinoa (C. quinoa). Like quinoa, pitseed goosefoot was domesticated, possibly independently, in eastern North America (subsp.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe identification of genes involved in salinity tolerance has primarily focused on model plants and crops. However, plants naturally adapted to highly saline environments offer valuable insights into tolerance to extreme salinity. Salicornia plants grow in coastal salt marshes, stimulated by NaCl.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding the regulation of flowering time is crucial for adaptation of crops to new environment. In this study, we examined the timing of floral transition and analysed transcriptomes in leaf and shoot apical meristems of photoperiod-sensitive and -insensitive quinoa accessions. Histological analysis showed that floral transition in quinoa initiates 2-3 weeks after sowing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFQuinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) is an allotetraploid seed crop with the potential to help address global food security concerns. Genomes have been assembled for four accessions of quinoa; however, all assemblies are fragmented and do not reflect known chromosome biology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Plant Sci
March 2023
Globally, wheat is the major source of staple food, protein, and basic calories for most of the human population. Strategies must be adopted for sustainable wheat crop production to fill the ever-increasing food demand. Salinity is one of the major abiotic stresses involved in plant growth retardation and grain yield reduction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFQuinoa ( Willd.), a pseudocereal with high protein quality originating from the Andean region of South America, has broad genetic variation and adaptability to diverse agroecological conditions, contributing to the potential to serve as a global keystone protein crop in a changing climate. However, the germplasm resources currently available to facilitate quinoa expansion worldwide are restricted to a small portion of quinoa's total genetic diversity, in part because of day-length sensitivity and issues related to seed sovereignty.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite the numerous advances made in our understanding of the physiology and molecular genetics of salinity tolerance, there have been relatively few applications of these to improve the salt tolerance of crops. The most significant advances have historically utilized intraspecific variation, introgression of traits from close crop wild relatives, or, less frequently, introgression from more distant relatives. Advanced lines often fail due to difficulties in the introgression or tracking of traits or due to yield penalties associated with the alleles in nonsaline environments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Plant Sci
January 2023
Plant's perception of heat stress involves several pathways and signaling molecules, such as phosphoinositide, which is derived from structural membrane lipids phosphatidylinositol. Phospholipase C (PLC) is a well-known signaling enzyme containing many isoforms in different organisms. In the present study, Phospholipase C Isoform 5 () was investigated for its role in thermotolerance in .
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrends Plant Sci
May 2023
A genetic framework underpinning salinity tolerance at reproductive stage was revealed by genome-wide SNP markers and major adaptability genes in synthetic-derived wheats, and trait-associated loci were used to predict phenotypes. Using wild relatives of crops to identify genes related to improved productivity and resilience to climate extremes is a prioritized area of crop genetic improvement. High salinity is a widespread crop production constraint, and development of salt-tolerant cultivars is a sustainable solution.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFQuinoa germplasm preserves useful and substantial genetic variation, yet it remains untapped due to a lack of implementation of modern breeding tools. We have integrated field and sequence data to characterize a large diversity panel of quinoa. Whole-genome sequencing of 310 accessions revealed 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPre-exposing (priming) plants to mild, non-lethal elevated temperature improves their tolerance to a later higher-temperature stress (triggering stimulus), which is of great ecological importance. 'Thermomemory' is maintaining this tolerance for an extended period of time. NAM/ATAF1/2/CUC2 (NAC) proteins are plant-specific transcription factors (TFs) that modulate responses to abiotic stresses, including heat stress (HS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe ensuing heat stress drastically affects wheat plant growth and development, consequently compromising its grain yield. There are many thermoregulatory processes/mechanisms mediated by ion channels, lipids, and lipid-modifying enzymes that occur in the plasma membrane and the chloroplast. With the onset of abiotic or biotic stresses, phosphoinositide-specific phospholipase C (PI-PLC), as a signaling enzyme, hydrolyzes phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PIP) to generate inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP) and diacylglycerol (DAG) which is further phosphorylated into phosphatidic acid (PA) as a secondary messenger and is involved in multiple processes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFQuinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) is an herbaceous annual crop of the amaranth family (Amaranthaceae). It is increasingly cultivated for its nutritious grains, which are rich in protein and essential amino acids, lipids, and minerals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFQuinoa is a crop originating in the Andes but grown more widely and with the genetic potential for significant further expansion. Due to the phenotypic plasticity of quinoa, varieties need to be assessed across years and multiple locations. To improve comparability among field trials across the globe and to facilitate collaborations, components of the trials need to be kept consistent, including the type and methods of data collected.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlobal use of nitrogen (N) fertilizers has increased sevenfold from 1960 to 1995 but much of the N applied is lost to the environment. Modifying the temporal and spatial distribution of organic N within the plant can lead to improved grain yield and/or grain protein content for the same or reduced N fertilizer inputs. Biotechnological approaches to modify whole plant distribution of amino acids and ureides has proven successful in several crop species.
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