With the anticipated climate change drought is foreseen as becoming one of the most serious constraints for agriculture production. Exposure of plants to drought stress causes various physiological changes and can have deleterious effect on different cell functions. Changes are detected on different levels, on genetic as well as on the level of proteins. Common bean is susceptible to drought, but the mechanism of its response is not well characterized yet. In the presented article a survey of the research of the bean response to drought, carried out in Slovenia in the last decade is presented. The response has been studied on several levels, from genetic and genomic analyses, proteomic studies and studies of plant proteases to physiological response of plants to drought stress. One of the goals is also identification of quantitative trait loci for drought tolerance and development of a linkage map to facilitate the common bean breeding process.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 4019560Common bean is nutritionally very important legume plant that exhibits sensitivity to drought which affects its growth and yield. Plants developed mechanisms in adapting to drought, which are expressed by changes of gene expression and functional protein content, together with responses at physiological and morphological levels. Identifying changes in responses to drought in different species will provide markers essential to characterize candidate genotypes for marker assisted selection in breeding for greater drought tolerance. To establish differences between plants subjected to water withdrawal and normally watered plants of common bean, the parental cultivars, drought tolerant Tiber and drought susceptible variety Starozagorski čern, were grown in a growth chamber under controlled environment conditions. Plants were watered daily to the same pot weight. After three weeks the half of plants were stressed by withholding irrigation. The measurements were taken at the different stage of drought at the third trifoliate leaves. The hydration state of leaves was defined by their relative water content (RWC), water potential (Ψw) and different photosynthetic parameters. Detached leaf samples are kept at -80°C for further analyses. In water stressed plants RWC dropped to 50% compared to control plants. Due to the reduction of water potential, the duration of the leaf stomata closure was increased as confirmed by the results of photosynthetic and other physiological parameters. In addition differences in response to drought between the cultivars were confirmed, which form the basis for a further study of genetic variation with molecular markers and mapping of loci linked to quantitative traits.
D.09 Tutoring for postgraduate students
COBISS.SI-ID: 4320360