Komal Goel is a Ph.D. scholar in the Integrative Plant Adaptomics Lab (iPAL) at CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology, Palampur, India. The current research theme of her Ph.D. work revolves around the unexplored underutilized ancient C3 and C4 pseudocereals of the family Amaranthaceae, which hold the potential to become future climate crops ensuring food and nutritional security. Komal is investigating heat stress responses from the whole-plant level (growth, physiology, biochemical) to the level of genes, metabolites and enzymes. Also, she is implementing functional genomics tools to characterize photosynthetic and stress responsive genes.
Wednesday Session 10
Daytime and night-time heating triggers asymmetric effects on CO2
assimilation and evolution pathways in Chenopodium quinoa
K. Goel1,2, G. Zinta1,2*
1Biotechnology Division, CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology, Palampur, Himachal Pradesh,176061, India
2Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad,
Uttar Pradesh, 201002, India
The growing human population and rising global temperatures exacerbate food insecurity and jeopardize crop production. Global climate change trends predict asymmetrical temperature shifts in daytime and night-time temperatures, hampering crop yield dramatically. This necessitates the diversification of agriculture with alternative crops exhibiting climate resilience and superior nutrition profiles. Chenopodium quinoa is a stress-resilient crop with high nutritional value. However, how asymmetrical temperature trends during the day and night affect quinoa growth and yield is unknown. We grew quinoa at control (22/20⁰C, day/night) and exposed it to asymmetrical day (38/22⁰C) and night heating (22/32⁰C) during vegetative and reproductive stages. A multi-level (physiological, biochemical, transcriptional, and metabolic) analysis was performed. The analysis of growth (biomass and yield) and gas exchange (An, gs, E, Ci, ETR, Fv/Fm, NPQ) parameters revealed that heat induces developmental stage-specific effects, wherein the reproductive stage is more heat sensitive, and night heating worsens the impact. The mechanistic basis of these observations is that daytime and night-time heating triggers asymmetric effects on CO2 assimilation and evolution pathways. Furthermore, transcriptome and metabolome data corroborated these results. Overall, we unravel the regulatory networks underlying heat responses in Chenopodium quinoa, which is crucial to expand the cultivation of this future food crop.
(this talk will not be recorded or available on demand)