Compound patented by the CSIC and the UPV reduces the impact of drought and improves productivity in tomato plants
Description
The work, published in Horticulture Research , by a team from the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology of Plants, IBMCP (a joint centre of the CSIC and the UPV) has discovered how hexenyl butanoate (HB) acts, the aroma emitted by tomato plants to resist bacteria: “Given the importance of stomatal control over water stress, treatments with HB alleviate the symptoms caused by drought and improve the productivity of crops such as tomatoes. Thus, in the context of severe drought that we are currently experiencing in Spain, the development of this type of compound represents a major advance in dealing with this situation,” highlights Purificación Lisón, a researcher at the IBMCP.
In addition, the team has also verified its usefulness in other crops such as potatoes, to which it confers greater resistance to Phytophthora infestans , a parasite that produces a disease known as late blight or mildew and which causes great losses.
To study the mode of action of the compound HB, the IBMCP team carried out different strategies: genetic, through the use of biosynthesis mutants in certain molecules; pharmacological, with exogenous treatments with inhibitors of the possible processes involved; through analysis for the detection of phosphorylations; and transcriptomic, using new massive sequencing techniques (RNAseq) that allow understanding the reprogramming mechanisms of the treated plants in terms of mRNAs.