Towards a better understanding of the plant responses to drought stresses

Montepulciano and Sangiovese are two heavily spread Italian cultivars that are known to show distinct responses to drought stress. While Sangiovese has been described as an anisohydric variety, Montepulciano is known to have a near-isohydric behaviour. Montepulciano leaves showed almost complete stomatal closure at higher leaf and stem water potentials than Sangiovese. Transcriptomics works conducted by the University of Verona allowed to study the expression of 1000 genes in samples from these two varieties collected at different time point after a water stress was applied. Differences in responses were observed between the two cultivars. Several genes were upregulated by the stress and down regulated by the re-watering for Montepulciano. For Sangiovese, the same conclusion couldn’t be drawn. The detailed results of this study that will be published soon will bring new insights on the mechanisms involved in the plant response to drought stresses.

To learn more about the plant response to drought stress, contact Giovanni Battista Tornielli