Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BOTANY
Volume 70, Issue 18, Pages 4737-4747Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/jxb/erz248
Keywords
Cereals; drought; photosynthesis; stomata; water-use efficiency; wheat
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Funding
- White Rose BBSRC DTP studentship
- BBSRC SARIC grant [BB/N004167/1]
- BBSRC grant [BB/J019356]
- BBSRC [BB/N004167/1, BB/I002154/1, BB/J019356/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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Wheat is a staple crop, frequently cultivated in water-restricted environments. Improving crop water-use efficiency would be desirable if grain yield can be maintained. We investigated whether a decrease in wheat stomatal density via the manipulation of epidermal patterning factor (EPF) gene expression could improve water-use efficiency. Our results show that severe reductions in stomatal density in EPF-overexpressing wheat plants have a detrimental outcome on yields. However, wheat plants with a more moderate reduction in stomatal density (i.e. <50% reduction in stomatal density on leaves prior to tillering) had yields indistinguishable from controls, coupled with an increase in intrinsic water-use efficiency. Yields of these moderately reduced stomatal density plants were also comparable with those of control plants under conditions of drought and elevated CO2. Our data demonstrate that EPF-mediated control of wheat stomatal development follows that observed in other grasses, and we identify the potential of stomatal density as a tool for breeding wheat plants that are better able to withstand water-restricted environments without yield loss.
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