4.7 Article

Metabolite profiling of barley flag leaves under drought and combined heat and drought stress reveals metabolic QTLs for metabolites associated with antioxidant defense

Journal

JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BOTANY
Volume 68, Issue 7, Pages 1697-1713

Publisher

OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/jxb/erx038

Keywords

Barley; combined heat and drought stress; GABA shunt; genome-wide association mapping; glutathione; metabolite profiling; mQTL; thousand grain weight; tocopherol

Categories

Funding

  1. German Federal Ministry for Education and Research, BMBF
  2. BayKlimaFit program of the Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Consumer Protection
  3. Saatzucht Josef Breun (Herzogenaurach, Germany)
  4. Saaten-Union Biotec (Leopoldshohe, Germany)

Ask authors/readers for more resources

Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is among the most stress-tolerant crops; however, not much is known about the genetic and environmental control of metabolic adaptation of barley to abiotic stresses. We have subjected a genetically diverse set of 81 barley accessions, consisting of Mediterranean landrace genotypes and German elite breeding lines, to drought and combined heat and drought stress at anthesis. Our aim was to (i) investigate potential differences in morphological, physiological, and metabolic adaptation to the two stress scenarios between the Mediterranean and German barley genotypes and (ii) identify metabolic quantitative trait loci (mQTLs). To this end, we have genotyped the investigated barley lines with an Illumina iSelect 9K array and analyzed a set of 57 metabolites from the primary C and N as well as antioxidant metabolism in flag leaves under control and stress conditions. We found that drought-adapted genotypes attenuate leaf carbon metabolism much more strongly than elite lines during drought stress adaptation. Furthermore, we identified mQTLs for flag leaf gamma-tocopherol, glutathione, and succinate content by association genetics that co-localize with genes encoding enzymes of the pathways producing these antioxidant metabolites. Our results provide the molecular basis for breeding barley cultivars with improved abiotic stress tolerance.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.7
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available