IBIP seminar

Thursday, April 4, 2019

at 2:00 pm – Room 108

Opportunities and challenges exploiting abscisic acid signaling for more crop per drop

Erwin GRILL

(Lehrstuhl für Botanik – Technische Universität München, Germany

Plants are ferocious consumers of water. More than two third of anthropogenic fresh water use is channelled into agriculture contributing to social conflicts over water resources. The atmospheric carbon dioxide is taken up by plants for biosynthesis of organic compounds and this carbon influx is inherently associated with massive efflux of water vapour. The phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) is the key signal for adjusting the water status of plants and for inducing tolerance mechanisms under water deficit. Under water limitation plants enhance the water efficiency of carbon capture. Insights into the molecular mechanism of ABA signalling provided the basis for switching plants permanently into high water use efficiency (WUE), which can be adjusted such that growth rates are not negatively affected. Physiological analyses show a remarkable resilience of the high WUE trait to changing environmental conditions. A first study on wheat indicates the usefulness of such an approach to combine high yield with reduced water consumption.


Contact: Christophe Maurel

Contacts IBIP :
Sabine Zimmermann
Alexandre Martinière
Florent Pantin
Chantal Baracco
Véronique Rafin