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Alterations in stomatal response to fluctuating light increase biomass and yield of rice under drought conditions
Author(s) -
Qu Mingnan,
Essemine Jemaa,
Xu Jianlong,
Ablat Guljannat,
Perveen Shahnaz,
Wang Hongru,
Chen Kai,
Zhao Yang,
Chen Genyun,
Chu Chengcai,
Zhu Xinguang
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the plant journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.058
H-Index - 269
eISSN - 1365-313X
pISSN - 0960-7412
DOI - 10.1111/tpj.15004
Subject(s) - biology , agronomy , drought tolerance , yield (engineering) , cultivar , biomass (ecology) , grain yield , haplotype , horticulture , allele , gene , genetics , materials science , metallurgy
SUMMARY The acceleration of stomatal closure upon high to low light transition could improve plant water use efficiency and drought tolerance. Herein, using genome‐wide association study, we showed that the genetic variation in OsNHX1 was strongly associated with the changes in τ cl , the time constant of stomatal closure, in 206 rice accessions. OsNHX1 overexpression in rice resulted in a decrease in τ cl , and an increase in biomass, grain yield under drought. Conversely, OsNHX1 knockout by CRISPR/CAS9 shows opposite trends for these traits. We further found three haplotypes spanning the OsNHX1 promoter and CDS regions. Two among them, HapII and HapIII, were found to be associated with a high and low τ cl , respectively. A near‐isogenic line (NIL, S464) was developed through replacing the genomic region harboring HapII (~10 kb) from MH63 (recipient) rice cultivar by the same sized genomic region containing Hap III from 02428 (donor). Compared with MH63, S464 shows a reduction by 35% in τ cl and an increase by 40% in the grain yield under drought. However, under normal conditions, S464 maintains closely similar grain yield as MH63. The global distribution of the two OsNHX1 haplotypes is associated with the local precipitation. Taken together, the natural variation in OsNHX1 could be utilized to manipulate the stomatal dynamics for an improved rice drought tolerance.