Gene expression profiling of the green seed problem in Soybean.

Renake N Teixeira,Henk W.M Hilhorst,José De B França-Neto,Wilco Ligterink,Edvaldo A A Da Silva

doi:10.1186/s12870-016-0729-0

Renake N Teixeira, Henk W.M Hilhorst + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-016-0729-0

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Abstract

BackgroundDue to the climate change of the past few decades, some agricultural areas in the world are now experiencing new climatic extremes. For soybean, high temperatures and drought stress can potentially lead to the “green seed problem”, which is characterized by chlorophyll retention in mature seeds and is associated with lower oil and seed quality, thus negatively impacting the production of soybean seeds.ResultsHere we show that heat and drought stress result in a “mild” stay-green phenotype and impaired expression of the STAY-GREEN 1 and STAY-GREEN 2 (D1, D2), PHEOPHORBIDASE 2 (PPH2) and NON-YELLOW COLORING 1 (NYC1_1) genes in soybean seeds of a susceptible soybean cultivar. We suggest that the higher expression of these genes in fully mature seeds of a tolerant cultivar allows these seeds to cope with stressful conditions and complete chlorophyll degradation.ConclusionsThe gene expression results obtained in this study represent a significant advance in understanding chlorophyll retention in mature soybean seeds produced under stressful conditions. This will open new research possibilities towards finding molecular markers for breeding programs to produce cultivars which are less susceptible to chlorophyll retention under the hot and dry climate conditions which are increasingly common in the largest soybean production areas of the world.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12870-016-0729-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Highlights

Due to the climate change of the past few decades, some agricultural areas in the world are experiencing new climatic extremes
Yellowing is observed during normal seed maturation which is expected to be a degreening process resulting from the conversion of Chl into colourless products in a multi-step catabolic pathway similar to that described for leaf senescence [10,11,12]
At R7, when Chl degradation should have started, the greenish seeds were considered “green”. At this stage there was an expected decrease in percentage of green seeds due to normal chlorophyll degradation during maturation but no significant difference was observed between cultivars or environmental conditions (Fig. 1)

Summary

Introduction

Due to the climate change of the past few decades, some agricultural areas in the world are experiencing new climatic extremes. Retention of Chl in soybean seeds is mainly associated with low rainfall and high temperatures during the maturation phase. These are common environmental conditions in tropical areas such as the Brazilian cerrado biome where approximately 45 % of the Brazilian soybean seed production is concentrated Yellowing is observed during normal seed maturation which is expected to be a degreening process resulting from the conversion of Chl into colourless products in a multi-step catabolic pathway similar to that described for leaf senescence [10,11,12]. Leaf senescence has been extensively studied and mutant lines exhibiting altered leaf senescence have been described for several different species e.g. Arabidopsis, rice, Medicago and soybean.

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