A single locus confers tolerance to continuous light and allows substantial yield increase in tomato

Abstract

An important constraint for plant biomass production is the natural day length. Artificial light allows for longer photoperiods, but tomato plants develop a detrimental leaf injury when grown under continuous light-a still poorly understood phenomenon discovered in the 1920s. Here, we report a dominant locus on chromosome 7 of wild tomato species that confers continuous light tolerance. Genetic evidence, RNAseq data, silencing experiments and sequence analysis all point to the type III light harvesting chlorophyll a/b binding protein 13 (CAB-13) gene as a major factor responsible for the tolerance. In Arabidopsis thaliana, this protein is thought to have a regulatory role balancing light harvesting by photosystems I and II. Introgressing the tolerance into modern tomato hybrid lines, results in up to 20% yield increase, showing that limitations for crop productivity, caused by the adaptation of plants to the terrestrial 24-h day/night cycle, can be overcome

Sucrose and Starch Content Negatively Correlates with PSII Maximum Quantum Efficiency in Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) Exposed to Abnormal Light/Dark Cycles and Continuous Light

“…In CLexposed plants, however, cytokinin treatment largely prevented the CL-induced injury. To evaluate further the effect of CL on cytokinin signaling, transcriptome contrasts between A131 and CLT (Velez-Ramirez et al 2014) were mapped to the tomato Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway for 'Plant hormone signal transduction' (sly04075). Supplementary Fig.…”

“…Nevertheless, a role for carbohydrate accumulation cannot be discarded. A transcriptomics study showed that the Gene Ontology (GO) term 'Carbohydrate metabolic process' is significantly enriched in differentially regulated genes in CL-sensitive tomato plants exposed to CL (compared with a 16 h photoperiod) and in CL-tolerant plants under CL (compared with CL-sensitive plants) (Velez-Ramirez et al 2014).…”

“…It has been known for many decades that tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) develops a characteristic, and potentially lethal, leaf mottled chlorosis and necrosis when exposed to continuous light (CL) (Arthur et al 1930). Understanding why CL is injurious to tomato has important implications for basic scientific research and practical applications (Velez-Ramirez et al 2011, Velez-Ramirez et al 2012, Velez-Ramirez et al 2014. Although many studies suggested that carbohydrate accumulation is an important factor in inducing the injury under CL (Arthur et al 1930, Dorais et al 1996, Demers et al 1998, Matsuda et al 2014, the mechanism that would explain this is not known and other hypotheses giving carbohydrate accumulation a secondary role or even not involving carbohydrates are also plausible.…”

“…Although many studies suggested that carbohydrate accumulation is an important factor in inducing the injury under CL (Arthur et al 1930, Dorais et al 1996, Demers et al 1998, Matsuda et al 2014, the mechanism that would explain this is not known and other hypotheses giving carbohydrate accumulation a secondary role or even not involving carbohydrates are also plausible. For instance, CL tolerance in wild tomato species was mapped to a photosynthetic gene with no known relationship to carbohydrate metabolism-the type III light harvesting Chll a/b-binding protein 13 (LHCB type III CAB-13 or CAB-13) (Velez-Ramirez et al 2014). This gene encodes a protein of the light-harvesting complex of PSII (LHCII).…”

Effect of source-sink manipulation on yield and related yield components in cassava, Manihot esculenta Crantz

“…pruning of fruit and leaves) are often applied to investigate the balance of source-reservoir plants (Matsuda et al, 2011). Crop growth models can be used to measure the power source and the bottom (Wubs et al, 2009). In this model, the strength of the bottom of the organ that develops is determined by the level of potential growth (i.e.…”