Recently, the plant environmental engineering team of the Institute of Environmental Development of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has made new progress in regulating the mechanism of plant photosynthesis under salt stress. It was found that short-term salt stress could increase the utilization rate of triose phosphate, a photosynthetic product of tomato, thereby alleviating the photosynthetic oscillation caused by fluctuating light intensity in high CO2 environment. The findings were published in the Journal of Experimental Botany.
Salt stress is one of the abiotic stresses that plants often suffer from in nature and in agricultural production. At the same time, due to the continuous change of the sun's altitude angle, canopy shading, and cloud movement, the dynamic change of light is ubiquitous. Salt stress is usually accompanied by dynamic changes in light intensity, which together affect the light energy utilization and growth process of crops. The efficient use of light energy in plants is an important basis for yield formation, and salt stress usually causes physiological drought and nutrient imbalance in plants, thereby reducing photochemical efficiency. Based on the characteristics of continuous dynamic change of light intensity in nature, it is of great significance to study the response of photosynthesis with the dynamic change of light intensity to salt stress and the physiological mechanism behind it, which lays a theoretical foundation for exploring the ways to improve the light energy use efficiency of crops under salt stress.
In recent years, the team has published a series of research results on the impact of salt stress on plant dynamic photosynthesis. First, the limiting effect of stomatal conductance and Rubisco activity on dynamic photosynthesis of tomato under salt stress was investigated (Zhang et al., 2018 Environ Exp Bot), and then it was found that the study of salt stress on plant growth in a steady-state light environment would underestimate the effect of salt stress (Zhang et al., 2020 Plant Cell Environ). Dynamic light environment can interact with salt stress, and salt stress under dynamic light further reduces the biomass of tomato seedlings by about 17% compared with steady-state light (Zhang et al., 2020 Plant Cell Environ). At the same time, it was clarified that the pathway of salt stress on dynamic photosynthesis was mainly through osmotic stress rather than ionic toxicity (Zhang et al., 2022 J Exp Bot). This series of studies is helpful to accurately reflect the photosynthetic physiological process of salt-stressed crops in dynamic light environment, and provides a new theoretical basis for cultivating high-light-efficiency crop varieties in saline-alkali land.
Mechanism diagram of the effect of salt stress on dynamic photosynthesis
Zhang Yuqi, assistant researcher of the Facility Plant Environmental Engineering Innovation Team of the Institute of Environmental Development of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, is the first author of the above paper, and researcher Li Tao is the corresponding author. Professor Leo Marcelis and Assistant Professor Elias Kaiser of the Horticulture and Plant Physiology Group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, and Thomas Sharkey, Distinguished Professor in Plant Photosynthesis at Michigan State University, USA, participated in the work. The series of research has been funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Young Talent Lifting Project of the China Association for Science and Technology, and the Special Fund for Basic Scientific Research Operations of Central Public Welfare Research Institutes.
Related Literature:
Zhang Y, Kaiser E, Dutta S, Sharkey TD, Marcelis LFM, Li T. 2024. Short-term salt stress reduces photosynthetic oscillations under triose phosphate utilization limitation in tomato. Journal of Experimental Botany.
Zhang Y, Kaiser E, Li T, Marcelis LFM. 2022. NaCl affects photosynthetic and stomatal dynamics by osmotic effects and reduces photosynthetic capacity by ionic effects in tomato. Journal of Experimental Botany 73, 3637-3650.
Zhang Y, Kaiser E, Marcelis LFM, Yang Q, Li T. 2020. Salt stress and fluctuating light have separate effects on photosynthetic acclimation, but interactively affect biomass. Plant, Cell & Environment 43, 2192-2206.
Zhang Y, Kaiser E, Zhang Y, Yang Q, Li T. 2018. Short-term salt stress strongly affects dynamic photosynthesis, but not steady-state photosynthesis, in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum). Environmental and Experimental Botany 149, 109-119.
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