Abstract

Drought, the most prominent threat to agricultural production worldwide, accelerates leaf senescence, leading to a decrease in canopy size, loss in photosynthesis and reduced yields. On the basis of the assumption that senescence is a type of cell death program that could be inappropriately activated during drought, we hypothesized that it may be possible to enhance drought tolerance by delaying drought-induced leaf senescence. We generated transgenic plants expressing an isopentenyltransferase gene driven by a stress- and maturation-induced promoter. Remarkably, the suppression of drought-induced leaf senescence resulted in outstanding drought tolerance as shown by, among other responses, vigorous growth after a long drought period that killed the control plants. The transgenic plants maintained high water contents and retained photosynthetic activity (albeit at a reduced level) during the drought. Moreover, the transgenic plants displayed minimal yield loss when watered with only 30% of the amount of water used under control conditions. The production of drought-tolerant crops able to grow under restricted water regimes without diminution of yield would minimize drought-related losses and ensure food production in water-limited lands.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Will W. Lester Endowment; the University of California, Davis; Arcadia Biosciences, Inc.; and a postdoctoral fellowship from the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport, Spain (to R.M.R.).

Supporting Information

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Information & Authors

Information

Published in

Go to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Vol. 104 | No. 49
December 4, 2007
PubMed: 18048328

Classifications

Submission history

Received: July 30, 2007
Published online: December 4, 2007
Published in issue: December 4, 2007

Keywords

  1. cytokinins
  2. isopentenyltransferase
  3. water stress
  4. water use efficiency
  5. oxidative stress

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Will W. Lester Endowment; the University of California, Davis; Arcadia Biosciences, Inc.; and a postdoctoral fellowship from the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport, Spain (to R.M.R.).

Notes

This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0709453104/DC1.

Authors

Affiliations

Rosa M. Rivero
Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA 95616;
Mikiko Kojima
RIKEN Plant Science Center, 1-7-22 Suehiro-cho, Tsurumi-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 230-0045, Japan;
Amira Gepstein
Department of Biology, Technion, Haifa 32000, Israel;
Hitoshi Sakakibara
RIKEN Plant Science Center, 1-7-22 Suehiro-cho, Tsurumi-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 230-0045, Japan;
Ron Mittler
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557-0042; and
Department of Plant Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91905, Israel
Shimon Gepstein
RIKEN Plant Science Center, 1-7-22 Suehiro-cho, Tsurumi-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 230-0045, Japan;
Eduardo Blumwald [email protected]
Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA 95616;

Notes

To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected]
Communicated by Emanuel Epstein, University of California, Davis, CA, October 11, 2007
Author contributions: R.M.R., A.G., R.M., S.G., and E.B. designed research; R.M.R., M.K., and E.B. performed research; R.M.R., M.K., H.S., R.M., and E.B. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; R.M.R., M.K., A.G., H.S., R.M., S.G., and E.B. analyzed data; and R.M.R., A.G., H.S., R.M., S.G., and E.B. wrote the paper.

Competing Interests

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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    Delayed leaf senescence induces extreme drought tolerance in a flowering plant
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
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