Abstract
Nitrogen deficiency usually occurs along with aluminum toxicity in acidic soil, which is one of the major constraints for wheat production worldwide. In order to compare adaptive processes to N deficiency with different Al-tolerant wheat cultivars, we chose Atlas 66 and Scout 66 to comprehensively analyze the physiological responses to N deficiency, coupled with label-free mass spectrometry-based proteomics analysis. Results showed that both cultivars were comparable in most physiological indexes under N deficient conditions. However, the chlorophyll content in Scout 66 was higher than that of Atlas 66 under N deficiency. Further proteomic analysis identified 5592 and 5496 proteins in the leaves of Atlas 66 and Scout 66, respectively, of which 658 and 734 proteins were shown to significantly change in abundance upon N deficiency, respectively. The majority of the differentially expressed proteins were involved in cellular N compound metabolic process, photosynthesis, etc. Moreover, tetrapyrrole synthesis and sulfate assimilation were particularly enriched in Scout 66. Our findings provide evidence towards a better understanding of genotype-dependent responses under N deficiency which could help us to develop N efficient cultivars to various soil types.
Highlights
Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the most important staple crops worldwide, providing the majority of calories for about 30% of the world’s population [1], and has considerably higher protein content than any other cereals crop such as maize and rice [2]
We focused our Gene ontology (GO) analysis only on the differentially accumulated protein (DAP) and mainly presented the GO categories of biological processes, since the GO categories of cellular components and molecular functions could provide less useful information in our study
In order to meet the demand of production for the ever-increasing world population, over wheat’s demand, N fertilizers are often applied into the soil all around the world
Summary
Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the most important staple crops worldwide, providing the majority of calories for about 30% of the world’s population [1], and has considerably higher protein content than any other cereals crop such as maize and rice [2]. In order to maintain or increase yield, nitrogen fertilizer is frequently overused, approximately 100 kg/ha being fed to wheat fields [3]. The N use efficiency is only 30–40% in wheat production during the first growing season. The overuse of N fertilizers has led to low N-use efficiency in wheat fields but has resulted in severe environmental pollution, especially soil acidification [4,5,6]. Understanding the mechanisms of wheat response to N deficiency and improving N-use efficiency, such as developing N-efficiency cultivars via molecular breeding, is critical for decreasing the dependence of N fertilizers. Developing a cultivar which possesses both N efficiency and Al tolerance would be useful to wheat production in acidic soils
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