Overexpression of the gene, encoding a violaxanthin de-epoxidase, improves tolerance to drought and salt stress in transgenic Arabidopsis.

To investigate the protective mechanism of violaxanthin de-epoxidase (VDE) zeaxanthin in under drought and salt-stress conditions, we cloned the entire cDNA sequence of from and generated -overexpression (OE) and -complementation (CE) Arabidopsis plants. The open reading frame of contained 1,446 bp nucleotides and encoded 481 amino acids. The ChVDE showed the highest similarity with those of and .