Sci. Rep.

Parthenocarpy, or pollination-independent fruit set, is an attractive trait for fruit production and can be induced by increased responses to the phytohormone gibberellin (GA), which regulates diverse aspects of plant development. GA signaling in plants is negatively regulated by DELLA proteins. A loss-of-function mutant of tomato DELLA (SlDELLA), procera (pro) thus exhibits enhanced GA-response phenotypes including parthenocarpy, although the pro mutation also confers some disadvantages for practical breeding. This study identified a new milder hypomorphic allele of SlDELLA, procera-2 (pro-2), which showed weaker GA-response phenotypes than pro. The pro-2 mutant contains a single nucleotide substitution, corresponding to a single amino acid substitution in the SAW subdomain of the SlDELLA. Accumulation of the mutated SlDELLA transcripts in wild-type (WT) resulted in parthenocarpy, while introduction of intact SlDELLA into pro-2 rescued mutant phenotypes. Yeast two-hybrid assays revealed that SlDELLA interacted with three tomato homologues of GID1 GA receptors with increasing affinity upon GA treatment, while their interactions were reduced by the pro and pro-2 mutations. Both pro and pro-2 mutants produced higher fruit yields under high temperature conditions, which were resulted from higher fruit set efficiency, demonstrating the potential for genetic parthenocarpy to improve yield under adverse environmental conditions.< Réduire

Mots clés

Tomate

Solanum Lycopersicum

Fruit

Développement du fruit

Mise à fruit

Métabolisme

Amélioration du rendement

Mots clés en anglais

Biologie Moléculaire

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-30502-w

Project ANR

Centre français de phénomique végétale - ANR-11-INBS-0012

Origine

Importé de hal

Unités de recherche

Biologie du Fruit & Pathologie (BFP) - UMR 1332