BIOCHEMICAL AND MOLECULAR ASPECTS INVOLVED IN WATERLOGGING TOLERANCE IN PRUNUS ROOTSTOCKS

The main rootstock used for peach in the last years has been the almond x peach hybrid GF-677. Its primary limitation has been waterlogging sensitivity.
Waterlogging is an abiotic stress caused by poor drainage in soils after transient flooding or irrigation leading to an anaerobic environment around the roots and inducing plant death.
However, some plants are able to survive a long time in these conditions.
Tolerance for this stress involves physiological and anatomical adaptations such as activation of a fermentative pathway, formation of aerenchyma, or synthesis of about 20 proteins known as anaerobic polypeptides (ANPs): alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), pyruvate decarboxylase (PDC), and xyloglucan endotransglycosylase (XET), among others, involved in glycolysis and fermentative pathways.
As a consequence, our main objective was to compare gene expression in plants tolerant and sensitive to waterlogging, under hypoxic and anoxic conditions and to measure enzymatic activity of ADH and of metabolites excreted from the plants to the culture medium.
The plant material studied were Myrobalan and ‘Felinem’ plants, respectively tolerant and sensitive to waterlogging, in vitro propagated, and subjected to low oxygen conditions (hypoxic) and oxygen absence (anoxia) with the purpose of studying the changes in the expression of candidate genes (ADH, PDC and XET), in the enzymatic activity of ADH, and in the metabolites (ethanol and acetaldehyde) produced during the ethanolic fermentation and transferred to the culture medium.

XII EUCARPIA Symposium on Fruit Breeding and Genetics

M.L. Amador, S. Sancho, M.J. Rubio-Cabetas

abiotic stress, ADH enzymatic activity, anoxia, candidate genes, hypoxia, metabolites

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2009.814.121