Non-photochemical quenching upregulation improves water use efficiency and reduces whole plant level water consumption under drought

Benjamin Turc; Seema Sahay; Jared Haupt; Talles de Oliveira Santos; Geng Bai; Katarzyna Glowacka

doi:10.1093/jxb/erae113

Non-photochemical quenching upregulation improves water use efficiency and reduces whole plant level water consumption under drought

J Exp Bot. 2024 Mar 12:erae113. doi: 10.1093/jxb/erae113. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Benjamin Turc¹, Seema Sahay¹, Jared Haupt¹, Talles de Oliveira Santos^{1

2}, Geng Bai³, Katarzyna Glowacka^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biochemistry and Center for Plant Science Innovation, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA.
² Laboratory of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Universidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense - Darcy Ribeiro, Campos dos Goytacazes, RJ, Brazil.
³ Department of Biological Systems Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA.
⁴ Institute of Plant Genetics, Polish Academy of Sciences, 60-479 Poznań, Poland.

PMID: 38470077
DOI: 10.1093/jxb/erae113

Abstract

For crop production, the water supply limitations will likely become a bigger restriction underlining a need for crops that use less water per mass of production. Therefore, water use efficiency becomes a constraint in obtaining resilient and productive crops. We hypothesized that under drought conditions via modulation of chloroplast signal for stomatal opening by upregulation of non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) it is possible to improve water use efficiency. Nicotiana tabacum plants with strong overexpression of photosystem II subunit S (PsbS), a key protein to NPQ, were grown under varied levels of drought. The PsbS-overexpressing lines lost 11% less water per CO2 fixed under drought which did not have a significant effect on plant size. Depending on growth conditions PsbS-overexpressing lines on the whole plant level consumed from 4% to 30% less water than the corresponding wildtype. The leaf water and chlorophyll contents showed a positive relation with the level of NPQ. Our study provides proof of concept and as such is an important step towards engineering crops with improved water use efficiency.

Keywords: crop improvement; drought stress; non-photochemical quenching; red light stomatal regulation; water use efficiency.