[P003] Poster

12:10 PM - 1:00 PM JST(3:10 AM - 4:00 AM UTC)

[P02-905] Ethanol application enhances drought and heat stress tolerance in cabbage

○Shunsuke Adegawa¹, Daisuke Todaka², Junko Ishida², Maho Tanaka², Tomoyuki Takeda², Farhan Aziz², Motoaki Seki^1,2,3 (1. Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Saitama University (Japan), 2. Plant Genomic Network Research Team, RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (Japan), 3. Kihara Institute for Biological Research, Yokohama City University (Japan))

Keywords:

Abiotic stress,Drought stress tolerance,cabbage

[Purpose] Drought and heat stress are among the most serious problems in agriculture. The frequency of these stress events has increased with global climate change, severely reducing crop productivity and leading to negative impacts on society and the economy. One strategy to combat this is to enhance stress tolerance of crops. Chemical priming is one of the useful techniques that can increase stress tolerance of plants. Our research group has demonstrated that ethanol, a safe and cost-effective chemical priming agent, could enhance tolerance to abiotic stresses in various plant species including Arabidopsis, wheat, cassava, and tomato. We named this technology as Ethanol-based Global Agricultural Optimization (EGAO). In addition to abiotic stress tolerance improvement by EGAO technology, we are trying to apply this technology to contribute to carbon neutrality in the Green Technologies of Excellence (GteX) program, JST. [Method] Seedlings grown in soil pots were immersed in 20 mM ethanol solution for 3 days, followed by drought stress (without irrigation, 7 days) or heat stress (42 degrees C, 1 day) treatment. After these stress treatments, seedlings were grown under normal conditions for several days. [Results] The drought stress treatment experiment showed that green leaf area and shoot fresh weight of ethanol-pretreated seedlings were significantly higher compared to those of control seedlings. Histochemical analysis of H2O2 through 3,3'-diaminobenzidine (DAB) staining showed that H2O2 accumulation was decreased by ethanol application. Stomatal conductance was significantly lower in the ethanol-pretreated plants than in the control plants. In the heat stress treatment experiment, shoot fresh weight was significantly higher in ethanol-pretreated seedlings. DAB staining showed a tendency for reduced H2O2 accumulation in ethanol-pretreated seedlings. These results suggest that EGAO technology is effective to increase drought and heat stress tolerance in cabbage. [Consideration] The increased stress tolerance might be achieved through the detoxification of reactive oxygen species. Currently, we are trying to perform transcriptome and metabolome analysis to elucidate the detailed mechanisms underlying ethanol-mediated drought and heat stress tolerance in cabbage. [Conclusion] We established the EGAO protocol for cabbage. It is expected that our study contributes to carbon neutrality in future.