Water shortage in the arid-semiarid regions of China seriously hampers ecosystem construction. Therefore, elucidation of the mechanisms by which vegetation in that area responds to drought stress may enable us to improve utilization of limited water resources and thus contend with the problem of drought and water shortage. We studied Bothriochloa ischaemum, a native grass species, conducted pot...

Rhizoctonia solani causes economically important root and hypocotyl diseases in common bean throughout the world. Root health is a vital factor in plant development and root diseases would negatively influence water and nutrient uptake as well as cause direct stand reduction and root rot damage to the crop. An efficient common bean screening method to evaluate damping-off and early root/ hypoco...

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a newly appreciated participant in physiological and biochemical regulation in plants. However, whether H2S is involved in the regulation of plant responses to drought stress remains unclear. Here, the role of H2S in the regulation of drought stress response in Spinacia oleracea seedlings is reported. First, drought stress dramatically decreased the relative water cont...

Drought and salt are major abiotic stresses that adversely affect crop productivity. Thus, identification of factors that confer resistance to these stresses would pave way to increasing agricultural productivity. When grown on soil in green house longer than 5 weeks, transgenic Arabidopsis plants that overexpress an ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter, AtABCG36/AtPDR8, produced higher shoot...

Investigation was made to confirm the stability of drought and salt stress tolerance in cauliflower (Brassica oleracea var. botrytis) mutants after regeneration and micropropagation. The N-nitroso-N-ethyleurea (NEU) and N-nitroso-Nmethylurea (NMU) induced mutants of cauliflower were created and screened for drought and salt stress tolerance. The highly tolerant mutants were selected, regenerate...

Water and nitrogen supply are the two primary factors limiting productivity of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). In our study, two winter wheat varieties, Xinong 979 and large-spike wheat, were evaluated for their physiological responses to different levels of nitrogen and water status during their seedling stage grown in a phytotron. Our results indicated that drought stress greatly reduced the ne...

This paper is a section of the book "Drought phenotyping in crops: from theory to practice" (Monneveux Philippe and Ribaut Jean-Marcel eds, published by CGIAR Generation Challenge Programme. Texcoco, Mexico). The section describes recent experience in drought phenotyping in rice which is one of the most drought-susceptible crops. The section contains genetic and genomic resources for drought ad...

Arabidopsis E3 ligase salt- and drought-induced RING-finger 1 (SDIR1) has been found to be involved in abscisic acid (ABA)-related stress signaling. SDIR1-overexpressing Arabidopsis plants exhibit improved tolerance to drought. Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) and rice (Oryza sativa) are two important agronomic crop plants. To determine whether SDIR1 enhances drought resistance in crop plants, SDIR1...

Hydraulic failure is one of the main causes of tree mortality in conditions of severe drought. Resistance to cavitation is known to be strongly related to drought tolerance and species survival in conifers, but the threshold of water-stress-induced embolism leading to catastrophic xylem dysfunction in angiosperms has been little studied. We investigated the link between drought tolerance, survi...

Harpin proteins are well known as eliciters that induce multiple responses in plants, such as systemic acquired resistance, hypersensitive response, enhancement of growth, resistance to the green peach aphid, and tolerance to drought. Overexpression of Harpin-encoding genes enhances plant resistance to diseases in tobacco, rice, rape, and cotton; however, it is not yet known whether the express...