Giving drought the cold shoulder: a relationship between drought tolerance and fall dormancy in an agriculturally important crop.

ABSTRACT: The growth of fall dormant/freezing tolerant plants often surpasses the growth of non-fall dormant/non-freezing tolerant types of the same species under water-limited conditions, while under irrigated conditions non-fall dormant types exhibit superior yield performance. To investigate the mechanism behind this phenomenon, we exposed seven diverse alfalfa (Medicago sativa) cultivars to water-limited and fully watered conditions and measured their shoot growth, shoot water potential and gas exchange parameters and the relative abundance of taproot RNA transcripts associated with chilling stress/freezing tolerance. Fall dormant cultivars had greater shoot growth relative to the fully watered controls under a mild water deficit (a cumulative water deficit of 625 mL pot(-1)) and did not close t

SUBMITTER: Pembleton KG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4038438 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature