| Crop | Soybean |
|---|---|
| Start Date | 2019 |
| End Date | 2022 |
| Principal Investigator | Stasolla, Claudio, University of Manitoba |
| External Funding Partners | Canadian Agricultural Partnership |
| Report | Stasolla – Drought & Salinity – MPSG ANNUAL Extension Report JAN 2020 |
Research Objectives
This project, aiming at assessing basic morpho-physiological events related to tolerance to both drought and salinity in soybean, consists of two separate objectives. In the first objective, commercial varieties of soybean will be screened to examine their behavior when grown under limited water conditions, imposed by applications of the osmotic agent polyethylene glycol, and salt under hydroponic conditions. Lines tolerant or susceptible to the stress will then be selected for future studies, which include the measurement of the expression level of phytoglobin, a hemoglobin-line protein found in plants and known to modulate stress conditions. The selected lines will be used to measure gas exchange parameters, such as rate of photosynthesis, transpiration, and stomatal conductance, as well as measuring the amount of specific metabolites required to alleviate stress conditions, and the cellular antioxidant system employed to remove excessive levels of reactive oxygen species generated during both drought and salinity conditions. In the second experiments lines in which the level of phytoglobin was elevated or reduced using a transgenic approach will be utilized in similar experiments to evaluate how altered levels of phytoglobin influence plant response to both drought and salinity.