Biosynthesis and regulation of cuticular wax and its effects on drought resis-tance of wheat
Drought stress leads to dramatic annual yield losses in wheat, while cuticular wax plays important roles in drought resistance; therefore, wax is vital for improving wheat drought tolerance and productivity. The wax confers essential ecophysiological functions, including the prevention of non-stomatal water loss and gas exchange, protection of plant from ultraviolet light or high irradiation, and other abiotic and biotic stress. Cutic-ular wax biosynthesis is very complex, and a number of genes involved in wax biosynthesis have been charac-terized recently mostly from model plantArabidopsis, as well as transcription factors (TFs) involved in the reg-ulation of wax biosynthesis. Cuticular wax biosynthesis is regulated transcriptionally, post-transcriptionally, and post-translationally; however, transcriptional regulation is considered to be the major regulatory mechanism. It has been indicated that drought can induce increased wax deposition, together with varied composition and morphology. Meanwhile, increased amounts of cuticular wax have been associated with improved drought tol-erance. Physiological studies in wheat found that wax signiifcantly increased the photosynthesis to transpiration ratio in greenhouse experiments, and increased grain and biomass yield in irrigated and rainfed ifeld experi-ments. The β-diketone pathway speciifc in wheat predominates in the reproductive stages. Despite its adaptive importance, the molecular mechanisms underlying variation in wheat wax especially for β-diketone and its as-sociation with drought tolerance remain to be investigated systematically.
cuticular waxcomposition and morphologybiosynthesis and regulationwheatdrought resistance
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
维普
