Efficient Regulation of CO Assimilation Enables Greater Resilience to High Temperature and Drought in Maize.

Increasing temperatures and extended drought episodes are among the major constraints affecting food production. Maize has a relatively high temperature optimum for photosynthesis compared to C crops, however, the response of this important C crop to the combination of heat and drought stress is poorly understood. Here, we hypothesized that resilience to high temperature combined with water deficit (WD) would require efficient regulation of the photosynthetic traits of maize, including the C-CO concentrating mechanism (CCM).

Photoprotection and optimization of sucrose usage contribute to faster recovery of photosynthesis after water deficit at high temperatures in wheat.

Plants are increasingly exposed to events of elevated temperature and water deficit, which threaten crop productivity. Understanding the ability to rapidly recover from abiotic stress, restoring carbon assimilation and biomass production, is important to unravel crop climate resilience. This study compared the photosynthetic performance of two Triticum aestivum L.

Measuring Rubisco activity: challenges and opportunities of NADH-linked microtiter plate-based and 14C-based assays.

Rubisco is central to carbon assimilation, and efforts to improve the efficiency and sustainability of crop production have spurred interest in phenotyping Rubisco activity. We tested the hypothesis that microtiter plate-based methods provide comparable results to those obtained with the radiometric assay that measures the incorporation of 14CO2 into 3-phosphoglycerate (3-PGA). Three NADH-linked assays were tested that use alternative coupling enzymes: glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) and glycerolphosphate dehydrogenase (GlyPDH); phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPC) and malate dehydrogenase (MDH); and pyruvate kinase (PK) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH).

An Optimized Quantification Method of Leaf HO Unveils Interaction Dynamics of Pathogenic and Beneficial Bacteria in Wheat.

Hydrogen peroxide (HO) functions as an important signaling molecule in plants during biotic interactions. However, the extent to which HO accumulates during these interactions and its implications in the development of disease symptoms is unclear. In this work, we provide a step-by-step optimized protocol for quantification of relative HO concentrations in wheat leaves infected with the pathogenic bacterium pv.

Effect of Cadmium Accumulation on the Performance of Plants and of Herbivores That Cope Differently With Organic Defenses.

Some plants are able to accumulate in their shoots metals at levels that are toxic to most other organisms. This ability may serve as a defence against herbivores. Therefore, both metal-based and organic defences may affect herbivores.

Spectrophotometric Determination of RuBisCO Activity and Activation State in Leaf Extracts.

RuBisCO plays a central role in photosynthesis and, due to its catalytic inefficiencies, frequently limits CO assimilation in fully illuminated leaves at the top of unstressed crop canopies. The CO-fixing enzyme is heavily regulated and not all the enzyme present in the leaf is active at any given moment. In this chapter, a spectrophotometric assay is described for measuring RuBisCO activity and activation state in leaf extracts.

Ectomycorrhizal inoculation with Pisolithus tinctorius reduces stress induced by drought in cork oak.

We investigated whether the performance of cork oak under drought could be improved by colonization with the ectomycorrhizal fungus Pisolithus tinctorius. Results show that inoculation alone had a positive effect on plant height, shoot biomass, shoot basal diameter, and root growth. Under drought, root growth of mycorrhizal plants was significantly increased showing that inoculation was effective in increasing tolerance to drought.

Photosynthesis of Quercus suber is affected by atmospheric NH3 generated by multifunctional agrosystems.

Montados are evergreen oak woodlands dominated by Quercus species, which are considered to be key to biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. This ecosystem is often used for cattle breeding in most regions of the Iberian Peninsula, which causes plants to receive extra nitrogen as ammonia (NH(3)) through the atmosphere. The effect of this atmospheric NH(3) (NH(3atm)) on ecosystems is still under discussion.