Enhancing salt and drought tolerance in marker-free transgenic durum wheat through overexpression.

Unlabelled: The gene family () comprises plant-specific genes that play crucial roles in plant development and defense mechanisms against a plethora of abiotic and biotic stressors. As revealed in our previous study, transcripts from durum wheat are induced by a range of stressors and its heterologous expression improved stress tolerance in yeast cells. Here we have focused on role in its host species, var. durum. We examined the expression profile of the gene and found out that it is upregulated in response to environmental stimuli and phytohormones, such as SA and IAA, indicating that the gene may control stress and hormone signaling pathways in durum wheat. We subsequently engineered marker-free transgenic durum wheat lines overexpressing the gene, which exhibited improved tolerance to drought and salt stress and yielded more than non-transgenic plants (NT). regulated both scavenging capacity of the antioxidant enzyme system and the activation of five stress-related genes that act as positive regulators of salt or drought stress tolerance. In light of our results, emerges as a promising novel gene with potential for further functional analysis and exploitation in molecular breeding to enhance environmental stress tolerance in grain crops.

Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12298-025-01608-z.