Mechanisms of frost resistance in Arabidopsis thaliana

Abstract

Freezing resistance strategies vary in Arabidopsis depending on origin. Southern accessions may avoid or tolerate freezing, while northern ones are always tolerant and reduce the proportion of freezable tissue water during acclimation. Survival of sub-zero temperatures can be achieved by either avoiding or tolerating extracellular ice formation. Conflicting evidence has been presented showing that detached leaves of Arabidopsis thaliana are either freeze avoiding or tolerant. Here, we used three different natural Arabidopsis accessions from different habitats to investigate the frost resistance strategy of whole plants in soil. Plants were cooled to fixed temperatures or just held at their individual ice nucleation temperature for different time intervals. Tissue damage of whole plants was compared to the standard lethal temperature determined for detached leaves with external ice nucleation. While all detached leaves survived freezing when ice nucleation was externally initiated at mild sub-zero temperatures, whole plants of the southern accession behaved as freeze avoiding in the non-acclimated state. The northern accessions and all cold acclimated plants were freezing tolerant, but the duration of the freezing event affected tissue damage. Because this pointed to cell dehydration as mechanism of damage, the proportion of freezable water in leaves and osmolality of cell sap was determined. Indeed, the freezing tolerant accession Rsch had a lower proportion of freezable water and higher cell sap osmolality compared to the sensitive accession C24 in the cold acclimated state.

Dissecting the Roles of Cuticular Wax in Plant Resistance to Shoot Dehydration and Low-Temperature Stress in Arabidopsis

“…As a species, Arabidopsis is generally treated as frost tolerant. However, there is evidence in the literature this model plant has the ability to avoid freezing [38,39] through the mechanism of supercooling [38]. The freezing phenotype of dewax and cer3-6 clearly indicates cuticular wax can play a role in Arabidopsis freezing avoidance.…”

Chemical products for crop protection against freezing stress: A review

“…advective) that give rise to frost (Fuentes et al, 2018;Perry, 1998;Snyder & de Melo-Abreu, 2005) Plants cold acclimate when they are exposed to low, but nonfreezing temperatures (slightly above the water freezing temperature) for several days or weeks and the period of exposure to light decreases, whilst being growth retarded (Larcher, 2003;Ruelland et al, 2009;Fürtauer et al, 2019). In this process, plant metabolism changes as a result of hormonal changes (Fürtauer et al, 2019;Galiba & Tóth, 2017); moreover, membrane proteins and lipid compositions change, and the concentrations of metabolites (protective substances) increase (Fürtauer et al, 2019;Hoermiller et al, 2018;Larcher, 2003). Carbohydrates are among the most important metabolites because they collaborate with membranes as osmo-protectors while protecting proteins against desiccation (Arakawa et al, 2018;Fürtauer et al, 2019;Sami et al, 2016).…”

“…Plant or crop protection mechanisms against low-temperature stress (Hoermiller et al, 2018;Larcher, 2003;Wisniewski et al, 2018) [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] have ice recrystallization inhibition activity. This prevents small ice crystals aggregate to form big crystals.…”

“…Plants have some mechanisms for surviving freezing stress, such as cold acclimation or cold hardening, freezing tolerance, and freezing avoidance (Hoermiller et al., 2018; Larcher, 2003). Cold acclimation and physiological changes enable plants to improve their hardiness in a frost environment, being a preliminary process for generating freezing resistance (avoidance and tolerance) in plants (Figure 1; Arias et al., 2015; Wisniewski et al., 2018).…”

“…Plant or crop protection mechanisms against low‐temperature stress (Hoermiller et al., 2018; Larcher, 2003; Wisniewski et al., 2018) [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]…”