Abstract
Salt and saline-alkali are major environmental factors limiting the growth and productivity of alfalfa, the most economically important forage legume worldwide. In this study, alfalfa plants transgenic for both ScNHX1 (encoding vacuolar membrane Na+/H+ antiporter from Suaeda corniculata) and ScVP (encoding vacuolar H+-PPase from S. corniculata) were produced by cross-pollination. Transgenic alfalfa plants coexpressing ScVP/ScNHX1 showed enhanced salt and saline-alkali tolerance to 300 or 200 mM NaCl with 100 mM NaHCO3 treatments, compared with wild-type plants. In addition, ScVP/ScNHX1-coexpressing alfalfa plants accumulated more Na+ in leaves and roots than wild-type plants and showed increased tolerance to higher salt and saline-alkali stress. Using the fluorescent carboxy-SNARF probe, the intracellular pH was visualized in the transgenic and wild-type plants under salt and saline-alkali stress. The results showed that the overnight treatment caused a massive change in pH in ScVP/ScNHX1-coexpressing alfalfa plants and they showed that there was significantly higher vacuolar alkalization under salt stress compared with wild-type plants. However, saline-alkali treatment enhanced vacuolar acidification more in the wild-type plants than in transgenic plants. Taken together, our results indicate that coexpression of multiple, effective genes in transgenic plants can enhance resistance to salt and saline-alkali stress.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by grants from the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (Grant no. NCET-08-0693), the Special Program for Research of Transgenic Plants (Grant no. 2011ZX08010-002), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 30971804), and the Science and Technology Development Project of Jilin Province and Changchun City, China (Grant nos. 20080252 and 2009024).
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Liu, L., Fan, XD., Wang, FW. et al. Coexpression of ScNHX1 and ScVP in Transgenic Hybrids Improves Salt and Saline-Alkali Tolerance in Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.). J Plant Growth Regul 32, 1–8 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00344-012-9270-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00344-012-9270-z