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Genetic engineering of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) with the P5CSF129A gene for osmoregulation with implications on drought tolerance

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Abstract

Abiotic stresses including water deficit severely limits crop yields in the semi-arid tropics. In chickpea, annual losses of over 3.7 million tones have been estimated to be due to water deficit conditions alone. Therefore, major efforts are needed to improve its tolerance to water deficit, and genetic engineering approaches provide an increasing hope for this possibility. We have used transgenic technology for the introduction of an osmoregulatory gene P5CSF129A encoding the mutagenized Δ1-pyrroline-5-carboxylate synthetase (P5CS) for the overproduction of proline. A total of 49 transgenic events of chickpea were produced with the 35S:P5CSF129A gene through Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated gene transfer through the use of axillary meristem explants. Eleven transgenic events that accumulated high proline (2–6 folds) were further evaluated in greenhouse experiments based on their transpiration efficiency (TE), photosynthetic activity, stomatal conductance, and root length under water stress. Almost all the transgenic events showed a decline in transpiration at lower values of the fraction of transpirable soil water (dryer soil), and extracted more water than their untransformed parents. The accumulation of proline in the selected events was more pronounced that increased significantly in the leaves when exposed to water stress. However, the overexpression of P5CSF129A gene resulted only in a modest increase in TE, thereby indicating that the enhanced proline had little bearing on the components of yield architecture that are significant in overcoming the negative effects of drought stress in chickpea.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Indo-Swiss Collaboration in Biotechnology (ISCB) for supporting this work for which the financial assistance was provided by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Switzerland. We thank Prof. D.P.S. Verma for kindly providing the P5CSF129AF gene construct used in this study. We dedicate this work to the living memory of late Mr. C. Jagan Mohan Reddy for his committed technical assistance over the years.

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  1. International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru, 502 324, Andhra Pradesh, India

    Pooja Bhatnagar-Mathur, Vincent Vadez, M. Jyostna Devi, M. Lavanya, G. Vani & Kiran K. Sharma

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  1. Pooja Bhatnagar-Mathur
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  2. Vincent Vadez
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  3. M. Jyostna Devi
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  4. M. Lavanya
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  5. G. Vani
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  6. Kiran K. Sharma
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Correspondence to Kiran K. Sharma.

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Bhatnagar-Mathur, P., Vadez, V., Jyostna Devi, M. et al. Genetic engineering of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) with the P5CSF129A gene for osmoregulation with implications on drought tolerance. Mol Breeding 23, 591–606 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11032-009-9258-y

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