1. Reduced stomatal density in bread wheat leads to increased water-use efficiency.
- Author
-
Dunn, Jessica, Hunt, Lee, Afsharinafar, Mana, Meselmani, Moaed Al, Mitchell, Alice, Howells, Rhian, Wallington, Emma, Fleming, Andrew J, and Gray, Julie E
- Subjects
- *
WHEAT breeding , *PLANT breeding , *DENSITY , *WHEAT , *GRAIN yields , *PLANT spacing , *WINTER wheat - Abstract
Wheat is a staple crop, frequently cultivated in water-restricted environments. Improving crop water-use efficiency would be desirable if grain yield can be maintained. We investigated whether a decrease in wheat stomatal density via the manipulation of epidermal patterning factor (EPF) gene expression could improve water-use efficiency. Our results show that severe reductions in stomatal density in EPF-overexpressing wheat plants have a detrimental outcome on yields. However, wheat plants with a more moderate reduction in stomatal density (i.e. <50% reduction in stomatal density on leaves prior to tillering) had yields indistinguishable from controls, coupled with an increase in intrinsic water-use efficiency. Yields of these moderately reduced stomatal density plants were also comparable with those of control plants under conditions of drought and elevated CO2. Our data demonstrate that EPF-mediated control of wheat stomatal development follows that observed in other grasses, and we identify the potential of stomatal density as a tool for breeding wheat plants that are better able to withstand water-restricted environments without yield loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2019
- Full Text
- View/download PDF