Suchergebnisse

Drought is the primary cause of agricultural loss globally, and represents a major threat to food security. Currently, plant biotechnology stands as one of the most promising fields when it comes to developing crops that are able to produce high yields in water-limited conditions. From studies of Arabidopsis thaliana whole plants, the main response mechanisms to drought stress have been uncovered, and multiple drought resistance genes have already been engineered into crops. So far, most plants with enhanced drought resistance have displayed reduced crop yield, meaning that there is still a need to search for novel approaches that can uncouple drought resistance from plant growth. Our laboratory has recently shown that the receptors of brassinosteroid (BR) hormones use tissue-specific pathways to mediate different developmental responses during root growth. In Arabidopsis, we found that increasing BR receptors in the vascular plant tissues confers resistance to drought without penalizing growth, opening up an exceptional opportunity to investigate the mechanisms that confer drought resistance with cellular specificity in plants. In this review, we provide an overview of the most promising phenotypical drought traits that could be improved biotechnologically to obtain drought-tolerant cereals. In addition, we discuss how current genome editing technologies could help to identify and manipulate novel genes that might grant resistance to drought stress. In the upcoming years, we expect that sustainable solutions for enhancing crop production in water-limited environments will be identified through joint efforts. ; AIC-D is a recipient of a BIO2016-78150-P grant funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and Agencia Estatal de Investigación (MINECO/AEI) and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER), and a European Research Council, ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2015-CoG – 683163). JBF-M is supported by the grant 2017SGR718 from Secretaria d'Universitats i Recerca del Departament d'Empresa i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya and by the ERC- 2015-CoG – 683163 granted to the AIC-D laboratory. AR-M is a predoctoral fellow from Fundación Tatiana Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno. DB-E and DM are funded by the ERC-2015-CoG – 683163 granted to the AIC-D laboratory. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No 683163). This work was supported by the CERCA Programme from the Generalitat de Catalunya. We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO), through the "Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D" 2016-2019 (SEV-2015-0533). ; Peer reviewed