A protein is found to help rice greatly improve drought resistance

Chinese and American researchers said on February 1th that making rice plants produce a large amount of PYL9 protein can significantly increase their drought resistance, thus helping to improve food security. This study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the joint completed by the Shanghai Institute of Plant Stress Biology Research Center and the American Purdue University and other units.

First author, Shanghai Plant Stress Biology Research Center, Zhao Yang said, these genetically modified crops of drought strategy is to accelerate the aging old leaves, but the leaves and buds of nutrients left to improve survival, which is similar to the gecko tails .

Zhao Yang is also doing research Purdue University. He said the plant drought-resistant mechanism relies heavily on a plant hormone called abscisic acid. But how ABA helps plants tolerate drought molecular mechanisms are not yet understood. For this, they artificially controlled the generated PYL abscisic acid receptor protein by the transgenic plants. And they found the overproduction of a protein PYL9 would do well to enhance the drought resistance of rice plants.

Experiments show that in the case of two-week drought, wild rice survival was 10%, while the survival rate of transgenic rice was above 50%.

Yang Zhao said, PYL9 Drought has taken a variety of strategies, including the closure of pores, inhibiting growth, and promote sleep, promote leaf surface wax synthesis, the most interesting is the old leaves accelerate aging. Water is the raw material of photosynthesis, the photosynthesis of plants in extremely arid environment is weak. Yeh aging can save water and nutrient depletion, water or nutrients at the same time transferred to the young leaves and buds, leave and shoot increased survival. Although this study used only rice and Arabidopsis, but Zhao Yang believes that this method is suitable for most drought-resistant plants.

Zhao Yang and other researchers did not analyze the impact PYL9 transgenic has on crop yield and quality. He said: "Because the water is raw materials of photosynthesis, drought will inevitably lead to the total biomass yield and quality is reduced, the transgenic plants can improve drought resistance, enhanced survival," to avoid the crops in extreme conditions, thus improving food security.

For the significance of the study, he said, one confirmed ABA directly induces senescence rather than to promote leaf senescence and shedding through the synthesis of other substances, which solves the long-standing controversial issues; the second is to clarify the meaning of the old leaves senescence plant drought tolerance, indicating that the old leaves senescence is conducive to plant survival in extreme drought conditions. While previously researchers have suggested that preventing aging is conducive to resist crop drought, and proposed it as a standard of screening drought resistance varieties.

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