Zhang Wen Sheng — Plant tolerance vs climate change

Plant Tolerance Versus Climate Change

Zhang WenSheng

Center for agriculture resource research, Institute of genetics and development biology, Chinese Academy of Science

2011.11.07

• Although the earth’s climate has been slowly evolving over millions of years,

rapid changes have occurred in recent times due to the activities of humans. It is now known that climate change and the continuing atmospheric CO2 rise will have increasingly profound effects on abiotic stress, plant growth and food security. Among the abiotic stress, drought and soil salinity are two major factors worldwide.

Humans activities → Climate change & global warming → Agricultural production & food security

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March, 2010, Yunnan, China

In spring of 2010, severe drought hit China's south-west region and in some places it is the worst drought for a century. The drought impacted about 4.3million hectares of farmland and more than 51million people. Direct economic damage had reached more than 370 million Yuan.

January 10, 2011, Source: Division of Climate Impoact Assessment/NCC/CMA

The 2010–2011 China drought impacted eight provinces in the northern part of China. It was the worst drought to hit our country in 60 years, and it affected most of wheat-producing regions in China.

Climate change and drought

From NCAR

Climate change: Drought may threaten much of globe within decades

Climate change and the increase of soil salinity

• Another problem related to climate changes and global warming is the increase of soil salinity. Sea level rise, the increasing frequency of dry periods in many regions of the world result in the consecutive occurrence of salinity on cultivated land. It was estimated that 20% of all cultivated land and 50% of irrigated land are affected by salt, greatly reducing the yield of crops.

Climate change enhances the importance and urgency of plant tolerance research and tolerant crops breeding

Tolerance & Resistance OR Death

Immobile lifestyle of plants

Vickers et al. 2009, Nature

Plants are exposed to a variety of abiotic stresses. These stresses often occur in combination

Generic pathway for plant response to stress

Huang et al. 2011, Mol Biol Rep

Transcriptional regulatory networks of abiotic stress signals and gene expression.

Shinozaki K , Yamaguchi-Shinozaki K J. Exp. Bot. 2006;58:221-227

© The Author [2006]. Published by Oxford University Press [on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology]. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]

Expression profiles of 7000 Arabidopsis genes under drought, cold and high-salinity stresses using full-length cDNA microarray

Motoaki Seki et al.2002, The Plant Journal

Down regulated Up regulated

Motoaki Seki et al. 2002, The Plant Journal

List of genes involved in different functional groups upregulated or downregulated by drought, cold or high-salinity stress

Salt treatment of wild-type plants and plants overexpressing AtNHX1 in the presence of 200 mM NaCl.

Apse et al. 1999, Science Zhang & Blumwald, 2001, Nature

The feasibility of modification of a single trait significantly improved the salinity tolerance of crop plant

Zhang zhengbin’s research team Cloning and function analysis of drought or salt tolerance related genes in wheat: TaWRKY, TaAQP, TaCer, TaNADP-ME

150mM NaCl

CK

Wild type 35S::TaWRKY2 35S::WRKY19

Transgenic of such transcription factors may be a good strategy for increasing plant tolerance

Genes used in the transformation of plants where authors claimed enhancement of salt tolerance, 1993-2011

• Comprehensive studies on key genes, quantitative trait loci and molecular networks that mediate plant responses to drought, salinity and other abiotic stresses are necessary to overcome this global challenge. The rapid expansion in knowledge on genomics and proteomics will accelerate the transgenic and molecular breeding approaches.

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To make plants to rapidly acclimate the changing climate, and achieve genetic increases in yield under abiotic stresses is a difficult challenge.

The complexity of the tolerance mechanisms

The complexity of the natural stressful environment +