Abstract
Wheat plants are very sensitive to high temperature stress during grain filling. Effects of heat priming applied to the first generation on tolerance of the successive generation to post-anthesis high temperature stress were investigated. Compared with the progeny of non-heat primed plants (NH), the progeny of heat-primed plants (PH) possessed higher grain yield, leaf photosynthesis and activities of antioxidant enzymes and lower cell membrane damage under high temperature stress. In the transcriptome profile, 1430 probes showed obvious difference in expression between PH and NH. These genes were related to signal transduction, transcription, energy, defense, and protein destination and storage, respectively. The gene encoding the lysine-specific histone demethylase 1 (LSD1) which was involved in histone demethylation related to epigenetic modification was up-regulated in the PH compared with NH. The proteome analysis indicated that the proteins involved in photosynthesis, energy production and protein destination and storage were up-regulated in the PH compared with NH. In short, thermos-tolerance was induced through heritable epigenetic alternation and signaling transduction, both processes further triggered prompt modifications of defense related responses in anti-oxidation, transcription, energy production, and protein destination and storage in the progeny of the primed plants under high temperature stress. It was concluded that trans-generation thermo-tolerance was induced by heat priming in the first generation, and this might be an effective measure to cope with severe high-temperature stresses during key growth stages in wheat production.
Highlights
Wheat is a worldwide staple food crop
There was no significant difference in Maximum carboxylation rate allowed by Rubisco (Vmax) between PH and non-heat primed plants (NH), while The rate of electron transport (Jmax) and Asat decreased much more in the NH than in the PH plants
We observed that thermo-tolerance induced by heat priming during the parental generation could be passed on to the progeny plants to more effectively respond to the successive generation high-temperature stress during grain filling in wheat
Summary
Wheat is a worldwide staple food crop. Wheat yield fluctuates largely due to abiotic stress. Along with the global climate change, the occurrences of extreme weather events such as heat and drought stresses have significantly increased, in terms of frequency, extent and duration (Field et al, 2014). The optimum growth temperature is around 21◦C during reproductive growth (Porter and Gawith, 1999). Temperatures higher than 33◦C in this stage lead to significant decline. Heat-Priming Induces Trans-generation Thermo-Tolerance of leaf photosynthesis and imbalance of reductive-oxidative state, reduced grain filling duration, and obvious yield loss (Ugarte et al, 2007; Barlow et al, 2015)
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