Journal Article
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 116, iss. 52, pp. 27124-27132, 2019
Authors
Nelle Varoquaux, Benjamin Cole, Cheng Gao, Grady Pierroz, Christopher R. Baker, Dhruv Patel, Mary Madera, Tim Jeffers, Joy Hollingsworth, Julie Sievert, Yuko Yoshinaga, Judith A. Owiti, Vasanth R. Singan, Stephanie DeGraaf, Ling Xu, Matthew J. Blow, Maria J. Harrison, Axel Visel, Christer Jansson, Krishna K. Niyogi, Robert Hutmacher, Devin Coleman-Derr, Ronan C. O’Malley, John W. Taylor, Jeffery Dahlberg, John P. Vogel, Peggy G. Lemaux, Elizabeth Purdom
Abstract
Significance
Understanding the molecular response of plants to drought is critical to efforts to improve agricultural yields under increasingly frequent droughts. We grew 2 cultivars of the naturally drought-tolerant food crop sorghum in the field under drought stress. We sequenced the mRNA from weekly samples of these plants, resulting in a molecular profile of drought response over the growing season. We find molecular differences in the 2 cultivars that help explain their differing tolerances to drought and evidence of a disruption in the plant’s symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Our findings are of practical importance for agricultural breeding programs, while the resulting data are a resource for the plant and microbial communities for studying the dynamics of drought response.
