Drought and Saline Stress Tolerance Induced in Somatic Hybrids of Solanum chacoense and Potato Cultivars by Using Mismatch Repair Deficiency

Imola Molnár, Lavinia Cozma, Tünde-Éva Dénes, Imre Vass, István-Zoltán Vass and Elena Rakosy-Tican
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Imola Molnár: Plant Genetic Engineering Group, Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology and Geology, Babeş-Bolyai University, 400006 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Lavinia Cozma: Plant Genetic Engineering Group, Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology and Geology, Babeş-Bolyai University, 400006 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Tünde-Éva Dénes: Biological Research Center Jibou, Babeș-Bolyai University, 400000 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Imre Vass: Institute of Plant Biology, Biological Research Centre, Eötvös Loránd Research Network, 6726 Szeged, Hungary
István-Zoltán Vass: Institute of Plant Biology, Biological Research Centre, Eötvös Loránd Research Network, 6726 Szeged, Hungary
Elena Rakosy-Tican: Plant Genetic Engineering Group, Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology and Geology, Babeş-Bolyai University, 400006 Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Agriculture, 2021, vol. 11, issue 8, 1-20

Abstract: Global climate change, especially when involving drought and salinity, poses a major challenge to sustainable crop production, causing severe yield losses. The environmental conditions are expected to further aggravate crop production in the future as a result of continuous greenhouse gas emissions, causing further temperature rise and leading to increased evapotranspiration, severe drought, soil salinity, as well as insect and disease threats. These suboptimal growth conditions have negative impact on plant growth, survival, and crop yield. Potato is well known as a crop extremely susceptible to drought, which is primarily attributed to its shallow root system. With potato being the fourth major food crop, increasing potato productivity is thus important for food security and for feeding global population. To maintain a sustainable potato production, it is necessary to develop stress tolerant potato cultivars that cope with the already ongoing climate change. The aim of our study is to analyze the response of potato somatic hybrids to drought and salt stress under in vitro conditions; the somatic hybrids studied are the wild relative Solanum chacoense (+) Solanum tuberosum , with or without mismatch repair deficiency (MMR). Upon this selection of drought and salt tolerant genotypes, somatic hybrids and their parents were phenotyped on a semi-automated platform, and lines tolerant to medium water scarcity (20% compared to 60% soil water capacity) were identified. Although none of the parental species were tolerant to drought, some of the MMR-deficient somatic hybrids showed tolerance to drought and salt as a new trait.

Keywords: drought stress; salt stress; potato somatic hybrid; proline; photosynthesis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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