Plants that grow well often fare poorly in heat or drought, while those that seem to shrug off hot or dry weather often grow slowly; neither type is ideal for crops. Now a Purdue plant scientist “has found the switch that creates that antagonism, opening opportunities to develop plants that exhibit both characteristics,” said the university.
“Once you know how the stress response and growth pathways are connected, hopefully we will be able to disconnect them,” said the scientist, plant biology professor Jian-Kang Zhu. The link is that a hormone known as ABA is activated in plants that tolerate stress from salt or drought; that sets off a chain reaction affecting what’s called the TOR kinase, which is essential for growth. The opposite happens in plants that are not under stress, said Purdue. In that case, “TOR disrupts ABA perception, shutting down the plant’s stress responses. Those plants tend to exhibit strong growth.”
“This is the key to the antagonism between stress and growth,” said Zhu. His findings, published in the journal Molecular Cell, “could help scientists and breeders who want to develop plants that can handle environmental stresses and still grow well,” said Purdue. The National Institutes of Health and the Chinese Academy of Sciences supported the research.