Abstract
β-Aminobutyric acid (BABA) and γ-aminobutyrate (GABA) had a positive role in alleviating the damage when plants were exposed to abiotic and biotic stresses. However, it is not known whether exogenous of GABA and BABA could improve the tolerance of cassava plants, and their synergistic benefits. In the current study, we found that the cassava seedling improved the tolerance by exogenous of BABA and GABA under salt and drought stress condition, as reflected by reducing the accumulation of hydrogen peroxide and increasing the activities of antioxidant enzymes. Meanwhile, the expression of genes encoding antioxidant enzymes was significantly unregulated by salt or drought stress after application of BABA and GABA, separately. Moreover, the transcript levels of DREB2A and SOS2 were significantly unregulated by salt after application of BABA and GABA, separately, and expression of DREB2A, NCED3, and CBF3 was significantly unregulated by drought stress after application of BABA and GABA, separately. Interestingly, there was a synergistic benefit on improving the plant stress tolerance by combining the application of BABA and GABA. Therefore, our study provides new insights into maintaining the high yield by combining use of the chemical compounds in cassava which is relatively hard to be genetically modified.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China (32171292), talent program of Guangdong Academy of Sciences (2020GDASYL-2020102011), National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFD1000500), Zhanjiang plan for navigation (2020LHJH006) to ZW.
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ZW conceived the project. XM conducted most of the experiments. HL and JG analyzed the data and prepared figures. XM and HL wrote the manuscript. HL, JG, and ZW critically commented and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Ma, X., Gu, J., Luo, Q. et al. The synergistic benefits of β-aminobutyric acid and γ-aminobutyrate on salt and drought tolerance in cassava. Plant Biotechnol Rep 16, 29–41 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11816-021-00735-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11816-021-00735-9