Priming with Small Molecule-Based Biostimulants to Improve Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana

Abstract

Biostimulants became a hotspot in the fight to alleviate the consequences of abiotic stresses in crops. Due to their complex nature, it is challenging to obtain stable and reproducible final products and more challenging to define their mechanism of action. As an alternative, small molecule-based biostimulants, such as polyamines have promoted plant growth and improved stress tolerance. However, profound research about their mechanisms of action is still missing. To go further, we tested the effect of putrescine (Put) and its precursor ornithine (Orn) and degradation product 1,3-diaminopropane (DAP) at two different concentrations (0.1 and 1 mM) as a seed priming on in vitro Arabidopsis seedlings grown under optimal growth conditions, osmotic or salt stress. None of the primings affected the growth of the seedlings in optimal conditions but altered the metabolism of the plants. Under stress conditions, almost all primed plants grew better and improved their greenness. Only Orn-primed plants showed different plant responses. Interestingly, the metabolic analysis revealed the implication of the N- acetylornithine and Orn and polyamine conjugation as the leading player regulating growth and development under control and stress conditions. We corroborated polyamines as very powerful small molecule-based biostimulants to alleviate the adverse abiotic stress effects.

Evaluation of Halophyte Biopotential as an Unused Natural Resource: The Case of Lobularia maritima

“…Among them, spermidine and spermine seem to be the most important indicators [ 113 , 114 , 115 ]. However, Hernándiz et al [ 116 ] recently showed that Arabidopsis thaliana seed priming with both putrescine and 1,3-diaminopropane showed an efficient level of salt tolerance for this salt-sensitive species. They found that the two polyamines induced glutamate metabolism, which was related to the synthesis of the polyamines.…”

Presence and future of plant phenotyping approaches in biostimulant research and development

“…One solution could be to use an appropriate software routine for counting the seed number to normalize the results, as shown by Ugena et al (2018) . Another option is using HTS approaches based on the rosette growth of very young Arabidopsis seedlings individually placed in 48-well plates ( Ugena et al , 2018 ; Sorrentino et al , 2021a ; Hernándiz et al , 2022 ). This method is performed in a growth chamber in which an XYZ robotic arm is automatically moved above the plates to take RGB images of single plates (more details in De Diego et al , 2017 ).…”