Metabolic response of maize plants to multi‐factorial abiotic stresses

Abstract

Clarification of the metabolic mechanisms underlying multi-stress responses in plants will allow further optimisation of crop breeding and cultivation to obtain high yields in an increasingly variable environment. Using NMR metabolomic techniques, we examined the metabolic responses of maize plants grown under different conditions: soil drought, soil salinity, heat and multiple concurrent stresses. A detailed time-course metabolic profile was also performed on maize plants sampled 1, 3 and 7 days after initiation of soil drought and heat stress. The metabolic profile of maize plants subjected to soil drought was more similar to plants exposed to salt stress than to heat-stressed plants. Drought-stressed maize plants subjected to salt or heat stress showed distinct integrated metabolic profiles compared with those exposed to either stressor individually. These differences show the considerable metabolic plasticity of maize in response to different growth conditions. Moreover, glucose, fructose, malate, citrate, proline, alanine, aspartate, asparagine, threonine and one unknown compound fluctuated obviously between maize plants grown in controlled growth cabinet and a natural regime. These changes were associated with the TCA cycle and core nitrogen metabolism, and could be related to their multiple functions during plant growth. The evident stress-induced trajectory of metabolic changes in maize indicated that the primary metabolic responses to soil drought, heat and combined drought and heat stresses occurred in a time-dependent manner. Plasticity at the metabolic level may allow maize plants to acclimatise their metabolic ranges in response to changing environmental conditions.

Phenotypic and metabolic variation among spring Brassica napus genotypes during heat stress

“…The ability of plants to alter their metabolome in response to different abiotic stresses has been reported in several species (Rizhsky et al 2004;Wahid 2007;Witt et al 2012). Sun et al (2016) differentiated metabolic profiles in maize depending on the stress imposed and, from multiple sampling time points, elucidated the most discriminatory sampling time for the stress imposed. The present work provides evidence that the metabolomic information collected from plants may provide the ability to determine not only the differences among genotypes, but also more accurately define the severity and timing of the stress to aid in the interpretation of the phenotypic response.…”

Evaluating maize phenotypic variance, heritability, and yield relationships at multiple biological scales across agronomically relevant environments

“…Among those are several plant characteristics including grain moisture, plant height, and KRN, which is consistent with the result of strong genetic control of these traits(Figure 3a).Most of the metabolites, however, show a relatively low repeatability, with the mean of 0.11. Metabolites are well known for their sensitivity to environment(Asiago et al, 2012;Baniasadi et al, 2014;Benevenuto et al, 2017;Sun, Gao, Li, Fu, & Zhang, 2016a;Sun, Li, et al, 2016b;Tang et al, 2017).Nevertheless, there is still substantial amount of genetic variation for some of metabolites observed in this and other studies, including high levels of genetic control of trans-chlorogenic acid and galactinol(Andrew, Wallis, Harwood, Henson, & Foley, 2007) (…”

“…There have been some analyses that explore a maize plant's response to specific environmental conditions such as salinity, heat, and drought (Sun, Li, et al, 2016b;Witt et al, 2012), nitrogen (Amiour et al, 2012;Brusamarello-Santos et al, 2017;Simons et al, 2014) and low phosphorus (Ganie et al, 2015) by monitoring the relationships of these environmental factors to those of metabolites and transcripts. Further examinations have begun to characterize the breadth of diversity of various inbreds and hybrids across typical agronomic environments particularly emphasizing these effectors on grain and forage composition (Asiago, Hazebroek, Harp, & Zhong, 2012;Baniasadi, Vlahakis, Hazebroek, Zhong, & Asiago, 2014;Benevenuto et al, 2017;Hall et al, 2016;Tang et al, 2017;Venkatesh et al, 2016).…”

Activation of Secondary Metabolism in Citrus Plants Is Associated to Sensitivity to Combined Drought and High Temperatures

“…In order to face combinations of drought and heat stress, plants specifically alter gene expression in a very different way that changes occurring in plants grown under defined stress conditions (drought or heat applied individually) (Rizhsky et al, 2002, 2004; Mittler, 2006). These alterations in gene expression lead to a specific regulation of the metabolome depending on the particular stress and the plant species (Rizhsky et al, 2004; Sun et al, 2016). …”