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Published on September 8, 2006; 10.1104/pp.106.084632

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Received June 2, 2006
Accepted August 29, 2006

Identification of Drought Tolerance Determinants by Genetic Analysis of Root Response to Drought Stress and Abscisic Acid

Liming Xiong *, Rui-Gang Wang , Guohong Mao , and Jessica M. Koczan

Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, 975 N. Warson Road, St. Louis, MO 63132, USA.

* Corresponding author; email: lxiong{at}danforthcenter.org.

Drought stress is a common adverse environmental condition that seriously affects crop productivity worldwide. Due to the complexity of drought as a stress signal, deciphering drought tolerance mechanisms has remained a major challenge to plant biologists. To develop new approaches to study plant drought tolerance, we searched for phenotypes conferred by drought stress and identified the inhibition of lateral root development by drought stress as an adaptive response to the stress. This drought response is partly mediated by the phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA). Genetic screens using Arabidopsis thaliana were devised and the dig (for Drought Inhibition of lateral root Growth) mutants with altered responses to drought or ABA in lateral root development were isolated. Characterization of these dig mutants revealed that they also exhibit altered drought stress tolerance, indicating that this root response to drought stress is intimately linked to drought adaptation of the entire plants and can be used as a trait to access the elusive drought tolerance machinery. Our study also revealed that multiple mechanisms co-exist that together contribute to whole plant drought tolerance.






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