Wild type and vte4 mutant Arabidopsis thaliana responses to different water frequencies: genetic engineering towards stress tolerance

摘要

Growth and development of plants are severely affected once exposed to soil water deficit. In addition, plants experience different levels of water stress in which their adaptation and response will be different. In this paper, we sought to investigate the growth, development and water relations of both wild-type (Col-0) and vte4 mutant Arabidopsis thaliana under different water frequencies. These water treatments, including control condition, 4 days of water withholding and 8 days of water withholding were imposed on the plants. Each water treatment was replicated three times in a complete randomized design with factorial arrangement. Wild type and mutant A.thaliana plants were subjected to the abiotic stress (water stress) for up to 24 days. The results indicated that under water stress, the performance of wild type plants were stronger than vte4mutants. Under control condition, specific leaf area, rosette dry weight and rosette dry weight at bolting of wild type A.thaliana scored the highest values of 47.66 mm2/mg, 13.67 mg and 201.5 mg, respectively in comparison with vte4mutant. However, both wild type and vte4mutant plants were negatively affected as the water treatments continued. The root mass fraction showed an increase in vte4 mutant and wild type A.thaliana as they scored 0.136g/g and 0.17 g/g, respectively. Under the same treatment, water potential indicated a reduction for both plan types where vte4and wild type plants obtained the values of -1.4 and -1.3 MPa, respectively after 24 days of stress initiation. As a result, our findings suggested that different water treatments significantly differed in growth characters in which the absence of γ-tocopherol methyltransferase (γ -TMT) gene in vte4had an impact on the plant’s response towards the water deficit.