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Survival and growth of Arabidopsis plants given limited water are not equal

Nature Biotechnology volume 29, pages 212–214 (2011)Cite this article

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To the Editor:

Although drought tolerance is a central concern of plant research, the translatability for crop improvement is relatively low. Here we report on a major contributing factor to this lack of success. Drought tolerance is predominately scored based on an improved survival rate under lethal conditions that, as demonstrated by our study, does not predict superior growth performance and, thus, biomass yield gain, under moderate drought often encountered in the field.

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Figure 1: Growth reduction caused by stress is independent of rosette size under control conditions.

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. Mittler, V. Buchanan-Wollaston, K. Shinozaki, D.-P. Zhang, I. Murgia, J. Salinas, S. Lindquist, E. Blumwald and S. Barack for kindly providing transgenic lines, and M. De Cock for help in preparing the manuscript. This work was supported by grants from Ghent University (Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds Methusalem project no. BOF08/01M00408) and Multidisciplinary Research Partnership (Biotechnology for a Sustainable Economy no. 01MRB510W), the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme (IUAP VI/33), initiated by the Belgian State, Science Policy Office and the European Community Grant FP6 IP AGRON-OMICS (contract LSHG-CT-2006-037704). S.D. is indebted to the Agency for Innovation through Science and Technology for a predoctoral fellowship. V.B.T. is the recipient of a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship for Career Development (PIEF-GA-2008-221427).

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Author notes

  1. Korneel Vandenbroucke & Anna Pucci

    Present address: Present address: Bayer Crop Science, Ghent, Belgium,

  2. Aleksandra Skirycz & Korneel Vandenbroucke

    Present address: Current address: Dipartimento di Agrobiologia e Agrochimica, Università degli Studi della Tusc(K.V.); Dipartimento di Agrobiologia e Agrochimica, Universita degli Studi della Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy (A.P.).,

  3. Aleksandra Skirycz and Korneel Vandenbroucke: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent, Belgium

    Aleksandra Skirycz, Korneel Vandenbroucke, Pieter Clauw, Katrien Maleux, Bjorn De Meyer, Stijn Dhondt, Anna Pucci, Nathalie Gonzalez, Frank Hoeberichts, Vanesa B Tognetti, Frank Van Breusegem, Marnik Vuylsteke & Dirk Inzé

  2. Department of Plant Biotechnology and Genetics, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Aleksandra Skirycz, Korneel Vandenbroucke, Pieter Clauw, Katrien Maleux, Bjorn De Meyer, Stijn Dhondt, Anna Pucci, Nathalie Gonzalez, Frank Hoeberichts, Vanesa B Tognetti, Frank Van Breusegem, Marnik Vuylsteke & Dirk Inzé

  3. Dipartimento di Scienze Biomolecolari e Biotecnologie, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy

    Massimo Galbiati & Chiara Tonelli

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Correspondence to Dirk Inzé.

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Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Figures 1–6 (PDF 1461 kb)

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Skirycz, A., Vandenbroucke, K., Clauw, P. et al. Survival and growth of Arabidopsis plants given limited water are not equal. Nat Biotechnol 29, 212–214 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.1800

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