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JXB Advance Access originally published online on September 18, 2006
Journal of Experimental Botany 2007 58(2):211-219; doi:10.1093/jxb/erl117
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© The Author [2006]. Published by Oxford University Press [on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology]. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

RESEARCH PAPER

Dynamic analysis of ABA accumulation in relation to the rate of ABA catabolism in maize tissues under water deficit

Huibo Ren1 *, Zhihui Gao1 *, Lin Chen1 *, Kaifa Wei1, Jing Liu1, Yijuan Fan1, William J. Davies2, Wensuo Jia1,{dagger} and Jianhua Zhang3,{dagger}

1College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, State Key Laboratory of Plant Physiology and Biochemistry, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China
2Department of Biological Sciences, Lancaster Environment Centre, University of Lancaster, Lancaster LA1 4YQ, UK
3Department of Biology, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Jiaws{at}cau.edu.cn or jzhang{at}hkbu.edu.hk

The plant hormone abscisic acid (ABA) accumulates in plant tissues which experience water deficit (stress ABA). This study analysed its accumulation as a function of both synthesis and catabolism in maize tissues. By following the disappearance of the stress ABA when ABA synthesis was blocked by nordihydroguaiaretic acid (NDGA), the rate of the catabolism of stress ABA was determined. When compared with the catabolic rate of baseline (non-stress) ABA, stress ABA showed a catabolic rate >11 times higher. With such an elevated catabolic rate, it is proposed that the xanthophyll precursor pool may not be able to sustain the ABA accumulation, and such a proposition has been substantiated by further experiments where fluridone is used to limit the availability of upstream ABA precursors. When fluridone was used, stress ABA accumulation could only be sustained for a few hours, i.e. ~5 h for leaf and 1 h for root tissues. In detached roots, stress ABA accumulation could not be sustained even if fluridone was not used, suggesting that stress ABA accumulation in root systems requires the continuous import of ABA precursors from the shoots. Such an assumption was substantiated by the observation that defoliation or shading significantly reduced ABA accumulation in intact roots. The present study suggests that ABA catabolism is rapid enough to play an important role in the regulation of ABA accumulation.

Key words: ABA accumulation, ABA precursors, catabolism, maize, water deficit


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