Global warming and climate change are currently the major environmental issue at international level. Adverse impact on crop yields and water resources in many areas of the world is forecasted, with involvement of the world’s food supply. Crops are strongly influenced by various environmental stresses such as drought, high salinity and low temperature. Various genes respond to these stresses at the transcriptional level and their products play a role conferring stress tolerance to the plants. As deeper knowledge is gained on stress-inducible genes, their sequences and their functional roles in stress response and tolerance, breeding programs profit from it for crop genotype selection. Previously, we isolated and characterized the gene, designated as TdDRF1, encoding a dehydration responsive factor in durum wheat. In this paper we report results from field trials carried out at CIMMYTs experimental station (Cd. de Obreg-n, Sonora, Mexico). Quantitative RTPCR analysis was used to monitor the expression profile of the three transcripts produced by the TdDRF1 gene under both stressed (reduced irrigation) and non-stressed (full irrigation) conditions. Cultivars differing in their tolerance/susceptibility to drought were analysed.

Export Date: 28 January 2011Source: Scopus