Abstract
Drought stress is one of the major threats to agriculture and concomitantly to food production. Tomato is one of the most important industrial crops, but its tolerance to water scarcity is very low. Traditional plant breeding has a limited margin to minimize this water requirement. In order to design novel biotechnological approaches to cope with this problem, we have screened a plant cDNA library from the halotolerant crop sugar beet (Beta vulgaris L.) for genes able to confer drought/osmotic stress tolerance to the yeast model system upon overexpression. We have identified the gene that encodes BvHb2, a class 2 non-symbiotic hemoglobin, which is present as a single copy in the sugar beet genome, expressed mainly in leaves and regulated by light and abiotic stress. We have evaluated its biotechnological potential in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and found that BvHb2 is able to confer drought and osmotic stress tolerance. We also generated transgenic lines of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) overexpressing BvHb2 and found that the resulting plants are more resistant to drought-induce withering. In addition, transgenic lines overexpressing BvHb2 exhibit increased levels of iron content in leaves. Here, we show that class 2 non-symbiotic plant hemoglobins are targets to generate novel biotechnological crops tolerant to abiotic stress. The fact that these proteins are conserved in plants opens the possibility for using Non-GMO approaches, such as classical breeding, molecular breeding, or novel breeding techniques to increase drought tolerance using this protein as a target.
Highlights
The human population is currently about 7 billion and, according to the Food and AgricultureOrganization FAO, it is expected to increase to up 9 billion in 2050
Traditional plant breeding has improved the effectiveness of some crops under drought stress [2], but there is a consensus in the scientific community that traditional plant breeding is not going to be enough to secure food production to a growing population, and plant biotechnology, including genetic engineering and new breeding techniques, will be required to increase food production
We found that transgenic tomato lines accumulated more iron in leaves, but the iron content diminished in fruits (Figure 4b)
Summary
The human population is currently about 7 billion and, according to the Food and AgricultureOrganization FAO, it is expected to increase to up 9 billion in 2050. To provide a robust food supply for this growing population, agriculture productivity must increase concomitantly. Drought is a major constraint for global food yield [1]. Traditional plant breeding has improved the effectiveness of some crops under drought stress [2], but there is a consensus in the scientific community that traditional plant breeding is not going to be enough to secure food production to a growing population, and plant biotechnology, including genetic engineering and new breeding techniques, will be required to increase food production. The development of crops able to grow in arid lands will allow the extension of cultivable lands or increase the productivity of already established agricultural soils and increase food production and diminish the water footprint, mainly in developing countries. It is known that drought is one of the main factors driving deforestation in developing countries [4]
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