Drought stress physiology of banana linked to a functional genomics approach.

Drought stress is worldwide one of the major causes of yield loss and this problem will even worsen under the treat of global warming and the deterioration of soils. Therefore, fundamental research is of paramount importance. Having a yearly production of 100 million tons banana and plantain are globally one of the biggest crops. Within the Musa species there is a vast amount of biodiversity. There are two ancestor genomes A and B and there is evidence that drought tolerance is related to the Musa B-genome. Banana, being a monocot with a superficial root system and a big leaf area index, needs vast amounts of water to ensure a high yield. The yield loss due to drought is estimated at 40% for an area with an annual yearly rainfall lower than 1200mm. Despite the growing need for water in banana production, the fundamental knowledge of drought tolerance is very basic and a rigorous analysis of the Musa biodiversity at the molecular and physiological level linked to different proportions of the subgenomes has never been performed. Therefore, a better knowledge on drought tolerance and drought tolerant varieties is crucial. After all, bananas and plantains are an essential component of the daily menu for more than 400 million people in the tropics and subtropics. The set-up of this proposal is to characterize the water use efficiency of different banana varieties and link this to a high throughput proteome analysis, to validate those results at the transcriptome level and to correlate the phenotype to the genomic constitution. By linking those multiple domains (physiology, proteomics, transcriptomics and genomics) we will be able to elucidate the complex mechanisms of drought tolerance. There is a great biodiversity with the Musa spp. and the Laboratory of Tropical Crop Improvement houses the Bioversity International banana collection. We have strong evidence that drought tolerance is correlated to the B-genome. Therefore, we will characterize 4 different varieties of the Bioversity International collection: AAA, AAB, ABB and BBB. This set of varieties enables to clarify the role of the B-genome in drought tolerance.

Keywords:gewassen, abiotische stress, moleculaire plantenfysiologie, Proteome analysis

Disciplines:General biology, Plant biology