Abstract
The stress reaction of maize plants was evaluated in relation to drought stress intensity and to growth stages by assessing the transpiration intensity and the expression of two dehydrin genes, DHN1 and DHN2. The maize plants were grown under four different watering conditions: well-watered (control), mild stress, moderate stress and high stress. The sap flow values were taken as an indicator of plant stress reactions at the transpiration level. A significant correlation between the average diurnal values of sap flow and the volumetric soil moisture appeared only for the moderate stress condition (R = 0.528) and for the high stress condition (R = 0.395). Significant increases in the expression of DHN1 and DHN2 (DHN1 = 105-fold and DHN2 = 103-fold) were observed primarily for the high stress condition compared to the control. Differences in the stress reactions at the DHN1 gene expression level were detected for all the experimental drought stress conditions. A relatively close relationship between the levels of expression of both genes and the values of the sap flow was observed during the initial stage of the stress (R = –0.895; R = –0.893). The severity of water stress and transpiration intensity significantly affected certain biometric and yield parameters of maize. Higher DHN genes expression at the ripening stage was related to lower grain and dry biomass yield. The results indicated that DHN gene expression assessment in maize and evaluation of the changes in transpiration expressed by the sap flow could be considered appropriate indicators of stress intensity while the DHN gene expression assessment appeared to be more sensitive than evaluation of the changes in transpiration, mainly in the initial phases of stress response.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Aguado, A., Capote, N., Romero, F., Dodd, I.C., Colmenero-Flores, J.M. 2014. Physiological and gene expression responses of sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) plants differ according to irrigation placement. Plant Sci. 227:37–44.
Badicean, D., Scholten, S., Jacota, A. 2011. Transcriptional profiling of Zea mays genotypes with different drought tolerances – new perspectives for gene expression markers selection. Maydica 56:61–69.
Benešová, M., Holá, D., Fischer, L., Jedelský, P.L., Hnilička, F., Wilhelmová, N., Rothová, O., Kočová, M., Procházková, D., Honnerová, J., Fridrichová, L., Hniličková, H. 2012. The physiology and proteomics of drought tolerance in maize: Early stomatal closure as a cause of lower tolerance to short-term dehydration? PLoS ONE 7(6):e38017.
Campbell, S.A., Close, T.J. 1997. Dehydrins: genes, proteins, and associations with phenotypic traits. New Phytologist 137:61–74.
Capelle, V., Remoué, C., Moreau, L., Reyss, A., Mahé, A., Massonneau, A., Falque, M., Charcosset, A., Thévenot, C., Rogowsky, P., Coursol, S., Prioul, J.L. 2010. QTLs and candidate genes for desiccation and abscisic acid content in maize kernels. BMC Plant Biology 10. doi:10.1186/1471-2229-10-2.
Chazen, O., Neumann, P.M. 1994. Hydraulic signals from the roots and rapid cell-wall hardening in growing maize (Zea mays L.) leaves are primary responses to polyethylene glycol-induced water deficits. Plant Physiol. 104:1385–1392.
Close, T.J. 1997. Dehydrins: A commonalty in the response of plants to dehydration and low temperature. Physiol. Plant. 100:291–296.
Doorenbos, J., Kassam, A.H. 1979. Yield response to water. FAO Irrigation and drainage paper No. 33. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Rome, Italy.
Ganeshan, S., Denesik, T., Fowler, D.B., Chibbar, R.N. 2009. Quantitative expression analysis of selected low temperature-induced genes in autumn-seeded wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) reflects changes in soil temperature. Environ. Exp. Bot. 66:46–53.
Gavloski, J.E., Whitfield, G.H., Ellis, C.R. 1992. Effect of restricted watering on sap flow and growth in corn (Zea mays L.). Can. J. Plant Sci. 72:361–368.
Gholipoor, M., Sinclair, T.R., Raza, M.A.S., Löffler, C., Cooper, M., Messina, C.D. 2013. Maize hybrid variability for transpiration decrease with progressive soil drying. J. of Agron. and Crop Sci. 199:23–29.
Gómez-Anduro, G., Ceniceros-Ojeda, E.A., Casados-Vázquez, L.E., Bencivenni, C., Sierra-Beltrán, A., Murillo-Amador, B., Tiessen, A. 2011. Genome-wide analysis of the beta-glucosidase gene family in maize (Zea mays L. var B73). Plant Mol. Biol. 77:159–183.
Grzesiak, M.T., Marcińska, I., Janowiak, F., Rzepka, A., Hura, T. 2012. The relationship between seedling growth and grain yield under drought conditions in maize and triticale genotypes. Acta Physiol. Plant. 34:1757–1764.
Grzesiak, M.T., Waligórski, P., Janowiak, F., Marcińska, I., Hura, K., Szczyrek, P., Głąb, T. 2013. The relations between drought susceptibility index based on grain yield (DSIGY) and key physiological seedling traits in maize and triticale genotypes. Acta Physiol. Plant. 35:549–565.
Guo, P., Baum, M., Grando, S., Ceccarelli, S., Bai, G., Li, R., Korff, M., Varshney, R.K., Graner, A., Valkoun, J. 2009. Differentially expressed genes between drought-tolerant and drought-sensitive barley genotypes in response to drought stress during the reproductive stage. J. Exp. Bot. 60:3531–3544.
Jacovides, C.P., Tymvios, F.S., Asimakopoulos, D.N., Theofilou, K.M., Pashiardes, S. 2003. Global photosynthetically active radiation and its relationship with global solar radiation in the Eastern Mediterranean basin. Theor. Appl. Climatology 74:227–233.
Jamieson, P.D., Francis, G.S., Wilson, D.R., Martin, R.J. 1995. Effects of water deficits on evapotranspiration from barley. Agric. For. Meteorol. 76:41–58.
Jia, J., Fu, J., Zheng, J., Zhou, X., Huai, J., Wang, J., Wang, M., Zhang, Y., Chen, X., Zhang, J., Zhao, J., Su, Z., Lv, Y., Wang, G. 2006. Annotation and expression profile analysis of 2073 full-length cDNAs from stress-induced maize (Zea mays L.) seedlings. Plant J. 48:710–727.
Klimešová, J., Středová, H., Středa, T. 2013. Maize transpiration in response to meteorological conditions. Contributions to Geophysics and Geodesy 43:225–236.
Koag, M.C., Fenton, R.D., Wilkens, S., Close, T.J. 2003. The binding of maize DHN1 to lipid vesicles. Gain of structure and lipid specificity. Plant Physiol. 131:309–316.
Kučera, J., Čermák, J., Penka, M. 1977. Improved thermal method of continual recording the transpiration flow rate dynamics. Biologia Plantarum 19:413–420.
Leitner, D., Meunier, F., Bodner, G., Javaux, M., Schnepf, A. 2014. Impact of contrasted maize root traits at flowering on water stress tolerance – A simulation study. Field Crops Res. 165:125–137.
Li, X-H., Liu, X-D., Li, M-S., Zhang, S.-H. 2003. Identification of quantitive trait loci for anthesis-silking interval and yield components under drought stress in maize. Acta Botanica Sinica 45:852–857.
Matejka, F., Hurtalová, T., Rožnovský, J., Chalupníková, B. 2005. Effect of soil moisture on evapotranspiration of a maize stand during one growing season. Contributions to Geophysics and Geodesy 35:219–228.
Meier, U. 1997. BBCH-Monograph. Growth stages of plants – Entwicklungsstadien von Pflanzen – Estadios de las plantas – Développement des Plantes. Blackwell Wissenschaftsverlag. Berlin, Germany. 622 p.
Novák, V., Hurtalová, T., Matejka, F. 2005. Predicting the effects of soil water content and soil water potential on transpiration of maize. Agric. Water Manage. 76:211–223.
Pfaffl, M.W. 2001. A new mathematical model for relative quantification in real-time RT-PCR. Nucleic Acids Res. 29:e45.
Pfaffl, M.W., Tichopad, A., Prgomet, C., Neuvians, T.P. 2004. Determination of stable housekeeping genes, differentially regulated target genes and sample integrity: BestKeeper – Excel-based tool using pair-wise correlations. Biotechnol. Letters 26:509–515.
Ribaut, J.M., Hoisington, D.A., Deutsch, J.A., Jiang, C., Gonzalez de Leon, D. 1996. Identification of quantitative trait loci under drought conditions in tropical maize. I. Flowering parameters and the anthesis-silking interval. Theor. Appl. Genet. 92:906–914.
Tommasini, L., Svensson, J.T., Rodriguez, E.M., Wahid, A., Malatrasi, M., Kato, K., Wanamaker, S., Resnik, J., Close, T.J. 2008. Dehydrin gene expression provides an indicator of low temperature and drought stress: transcriptome-based analysis of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). Functional and Integrative Genomics 8:387– 405.
Valluru, R., Davies, W.J., Reynolds, M.P., Dodd, I.C. 2016. Foliar abscisic acid to ethylene accumulation and response regulate shoot growth sensitivity to mild drought in wheat. Frontiers in Plant Science 7:461.
Vilardell, J., Goday, A., Freire, M.A., Torrent, M., Martínez, M.C., Torné, J.M., Pagès, M. 1991. Gene sequence, developmental expression, and protein phosphorylation of RAB-17 in maize. Plant Mol. Biol. 14:423–432.
Vítámvás, P., Urban, M.O., Škodáček, Z., Kosová, K., Pitelková, I., Vítámvás, J., Renaut, J., Prášil, I.T. 2015. Quantitative analysis of proteome extracted from barley crowns grown under different drought conditions. Frontiers in Plant Science 6:479.
Wood, A.J., Goldsbrough, P.B. 1997. Characterization and expression of dehydrins in water-stressed Sorghum bicolor. Physiol. Plant. 99:144–152.
Wu, Y., Huang, M., Warrington, D.N. 2011a. Responses of different physiological indices for maize (Zea mays) to soil water availability. Pedosphere 21:639–649.
Wu, Y., Huang, M., Warrington, D.N. 2011b. Growth and transpiration of maize and winter wheat in response to water deficits in pots and plots. Environ. Exp. Bot. 71:65–71.
Zheng, J., Zhao, J., Tao, Y., Wang, J., Liu, Y., Fu, J., Jin, Y., Gao, P., Zhang, J., Bai, Y., Wang, G. 2004. Isolation and analysis of water stress induced genes in maize seedlings by subtractive PCR and cDNA macroarray. Plant Mol. Biol. 55:807–823.
Zinselmeier, Ch., Sun, Y., Helentjaris, T., Beatty, M., Yang, S., Smith, H., Habben, J. 2002. The use of gene expression profiling to dissect the stress sensitivity of reproductive development in maize. Field Crops Res. 75:111–121.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Communicated by A. Mohan
Electronic supplementary material
Rights and permissions
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
About this article
Cite this article
Klimešová, J., Holková, L. & Středa, T. The Expression of Dehydrin Genes and the Intensity of Transpiration in Drought-stressed Maize Plants. CEREAL RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS 45, 355–368 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1556/0806.45.2017.017
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1556/0806.45.2017.017