OsRuvB transgene induces salt tolerance in pigeon pea

Rakshita Singh,Sudhir Sharma,Pushpa Kharb,Shabnam Saifi,Narendra Tuteja

doi:10.1080/17429145.2020.1722267

Abstract

ABSTRACT Salinity of cultivable land is a growing global concern that has been affecting the yields of major crops worldwide such as pigeon pea. In the current study, transgenic pigeon pea plants were developed using an in-planta Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation method wherein OsRuvB, a rice DNA helicase gene, was incorporated to induce salt tolerance in pigeon pea plants. Transformation efficiency of 35.7% was achieved with stable insertion of OsRuvB in transgenic lines. When subjected to salinity stress induced by 75 mM NaCl increase in chlorophyll content, relative water content, peroxidase and catalase activity in transgenic lines was observed over the wild type plants. Membrane injury index and lipid peroxidation were significantly reduced in transgenic lines. Proline and Total Soluble Sugar content were enhanced in both transgenic plants and wild type strains. It was inferred that transgenic lines were tolerant to salinity stress and tolerance may be imparted through an alternative unknown pathway.

Highlights

A major setback in agricultural productivity has been observed on a global scale, an attribute aggravated due to the changing climatic conditions
An in-planta method of Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation was used to develop the transgenic pigeon pea plants (Patent Application No 201811012099).The genomic DNA isolated from putative T0 transgenic plants was subjected to PCR amplification for confirming presence of OsRuvB gene using gene-specific primers
Amplification of 1.4 kb fragment confirmed the presence of OsRuvB gene in transgenic plants while the same was not observed in the genomic DNA isolated from wild type plants

Summary

Introduction

A major setback in agricultural productivity has been observed on a global scale, an attribute aggravated due to the changing climatic conditions. The effect of the changes in climates may be observed as increasing salinity of cultivable land, drought, submergence and extreme temperatures. All these factors, shortly termed as abiotic stress by agriculturalists, have severe detrimental effect on crop productivity (Boyer 1982; Mahajan and Tuteja 2005; Rao et al 2013). Salinity initially induces osmotic stress causing drought like symptoms followed by ionic imbalance. This in turn leads to salinity induced ionic toxicity or stress in plants. Major effects of salinity on plants include reduced CO2 assimilation: mainly due to stomatal closure, membrane damage, reduced activity of key enzymes of necessary cellular mechanisms such as CO2 fixation, ATP synthesis and increase in ROS due to the enhanced metabolite flux through photo-respiratory pathway

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion