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Variability in temperature-independent transpiration responses to evaporative demand correlate with nighttime water use and its circadian control across diverse wheat populations

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Abstract

Main conclusion

Nocturnal transpiration, through its circadian control, plays a role in modulating daytime transpiration response to increasing evaporative demand, to potentially enable drought tolerance in wheat.

Limiting plant transpiration rate (TR) in response to increasing vapor pressure deficit (VPD) has been suggested to enable drought tolerance through water conservation. However, there is very little information on the extent of diversity of TR response curves to “true” VPD (i.e., independent from temperature). Furthermore, new evidence indicate that water-saving could operate by modulating nocturnal TR (TRN), and that this response might be coupled to daytime gas exchange. Based on 3 years of experimental data on a diverse group of 77 genotypes from 25 countries and 5 continents, a first goal of this study was to characterize the functional diversity in daytime TR responses to VPD and TRN in wheat. A second objective was to test the hypothesis that these traits could be coupled through the circadian clock. Using a new gravimetric phenotyping platform that allowed for independent temperature and VPD control, we identified three and fourfold variation in daytime and nighttime responses, respectively. In addition, TRN was found to be positively correlated with slopes of daytime TR responses to VPD, and we identified pre-dawn variation in TRN that likely mediated this relationship. Furthermore, pre-dawn increase in TRN positively correlated with the year of release among drought-tolerant Australian cultivars and with the VPD threshold at which they initiated water-saving. Overall, the study indicates a substantial diversity in TR responses to VPD that could be leveraged to enhance fitness under water-limited environments, and that TRN and its circadian control may play an important role in the expression of water-saving.

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Abbreviations

TR:

Transpiration rate

TRN :

Nighttime transpiration rate

VPD:

Vapor pressure deficit

VPDTh :

VPD threshold

GraPh:

Gravimetric phenotyping

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station (Project# MIN-13-095), the Minnesota Wheat Research & Promotion Council (Projects# 00062299 and 00070003), the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS, contract# 1.E038.13), and by the National Science Foundation/Civilian Research & Development Foundation (Award# OISE-16-62788-0).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Twin Cities, MN, USA

    Bishal G. Tamang, Rémy Schoppach, Daniel Monnens, James A. Anderson & Walid Sadok

  2. Earth and Life Institute, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Rémy Schoppach

  3. Department of Plant Pathology, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, MN, USA

    Brian J. Steffenson

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  1. Bishal G. Tamang
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Correspondence to Walid Sadok.

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Tamang, B.G., Schoppach, R., Monnens, D. et al. Variability in temperature-independent transpiration responses to evaporative demand correlate with nighttime water use and its circadian control across diverse wheat populations. Planta 250, 115–127 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-019-03151-0

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