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Glycinebetaine: a versatile protectant to improve rice performance against aluminium stress by regulating aluminium uptake and translocation

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Abstract

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Glycinebetaine alleviates the detrimental effects of aluminium stress by regulating aluminium uptake and translocation, maintaining PSII activity, and activating the oxidative defence, thereby maintaining the growth and development of rice.

Abstract

Aluminium (Al) toxicity is one of the primary growth-limiting factors that limits plant growth and crop productivity in acidic soils. Rice (Oryza sativa L.) plants are susceptible to Al stress and do not naturally accumulate glycinebetaine (GB), one of the most effective protectants. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate whether exogenous GB can ameliorate the detrimental effects of Al stress on rice plants. Our results showed that the growth, development and biomass of rice were clearly inhibited under Al stress. However, exogenous GB application increased rice shoot growth and photosynthetic pigments contents, maintained photosystem II (PSII) activity, and activated the antioxidant defence system under Al stress. More importantly, GB may mediate the expression of Al uptake- and translocation-related genes, including OsALS1, OsNrat1, OsSTAR1 and OsSTAR2, and the galacturonic acid contents in rice roots under Al stress. Therefore, our findings highlight exogenous GB application is a valid approach to effectively combat Al toxicity by regulating physiological and biochemical processes in crops.

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Acknowledgements

Funding for this research was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31870216, 31470341) and the project EPPN2020-OPVaI-VA - ITMS313011T813 and VEGA 1/0589/19.

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Author notes

  1. Tianpeng Zhang and Wenxiu Zhang have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Life Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Crop Biology, Shandong Key Laboratory of Crop Biology, Shandong Agricultural University, Taian, 271018, Shandong, China

    Tianpeng Zhang, Wenxiu Zhang, Daxing Li, Fengli Zhou, Xiao Chen, Chongyang Li, Sang Yu, Yang Liu & Xinghong Yang

  2. Department of Plant Physiology, Slovak University of Agriculture, A. Hlinku 2, Nitra, 94976, Slovak Republic

    Marian Brestic

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  1. Tianpeng Zhang
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Contributions

XY and MB conceived and supervised the project, and XY, YL and TZ designed the experiments. TZ, WZ and DL performed most of the experiments. FZ, XC, CL and SY performed some of the experiments. TZ, WZ and XY analysed data and wrote the manuscript. MB and YL gave positive suggestion about this article. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yang Liu or Xinghong Yang.

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Communicated by Chun-Hai Dong.

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Zhang, T., Zhang, W., Li, D. et al. Glycinebetaine: a versatile protectant to improve rice performance against aluminium stress by regulating aluminium uptake and translocation. Plant Cell Rep 40, 2397–2407 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-021-02780-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-021-02780-8

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