Temperature Impacts the Response of Coffea canephora to Decreasing Soil Water Availability

Abstract

Climate change is expected to result in more frequent periods of both low rainfall and above normal temperatures for many coffee growing regions. To understand how coffee reacts to such change, we studied the physiological and gene expression responses of the clonal variety C. canephora FRT07 exposed to water deficits under two different temperature regimes. Variations in the timedependent impact of water deficits on leaf stomatal conductance and carbon assimilation were significantly different under the 27°C and 27°C/42°C conditions examined. The physiological responses 24 h after re-watering were also different for both conditions. Expression analysis of genes known to respond to water deficits indicated that drought-related signaling occurred at both temperatures. Deeper insights into the response of coffee to water deficits was obtained by RNASeq based whole transcriptome profiling of leaves from early, late, and recovery stages of the 27°C experiment. This yielded expression data for 13,642 genes and related differential expression analysis uncovered 362 and 474 genes with increased and decreased expression, respectively, under mild water deficits, and 1627 genes and 2197 genes, respectively, under more severe water deficits. The data presented, from a single clonal coffee variety, serves as an important reference point for future comparative physiological/ transcriptomic studies with clonal coffee varieties with different sensitivities to water deficits and high temperatures. Such comparative analyses will help predict how different coffee varieties respond to changing climatic conditions, and may facilitate the identification of alleles associated with high and low tolerance to water deficits, enabling faster breeding of more climatesmart coffee trees.

Understanding the Impact of Drought in Coffea Genotypes: Transcriptomic Analysis Supports a Common High Resilience to Moderate Water Deficit but a Genotype Dependent Sensitivity to Severe Water Deficit

“…The present study demonstrated that water deficit alters the transcriptome profile in the two coffee genotypes. Thousands of expressed genes were identified and annotated (Figure 1; Table S1) in agreement with previous drought studies in coffee [29,52,53]. However, contrary to those studies, we examined the effects of a long-term drought experiment in which stress has been imposed gradually.…”

Root Trait Variability in Coffea canephora Genotypes and Its Relation to Plant Height and Crop Yield

“…40% C. canephora [1]. However, the production of C. canephora is threatened by climate change, as it is sensitive to both water deficit and high temperature [2]. The selection of superior genotypes for adverse environmental conditions and the evaluation of diverse genetic pools are therefore essential to ensure its sustainability [3,4].…”

Assessment of leaf anatomic and physiological characteristics and genetic divergence among Coffea arabica L. cultivars in the Brazilian Savanna

“…For the first one, which corresponds to 55.40 % of the data variation, Catiguá MG3 P51, Catiguá MG1, Catiguá MG3 P5, Pau Brasil MG1 and Topázio MG1190 stood out, with higher values for stomatal conductance, net photosynthetic rate and intercellular CO 2 concentration (Figure 1; Table 4). Higher stomatal conductance scores can favor the necessary substomatal CO 2 assimilation for photosynthesis (Thioune et al 2020). According to the canonical variable analysis, a positive correlation between these characteristics and the photosynthesis ratio was observed (Table 4).…”