The Retinoblastoma-related gene RBL901 can trigger drought response actions in potato.

KEY MESSAGE: This study provided new insights into response of potato to drought stress.

Determination of the effect of abiotic stress on the oxidative potential of edible potato tubers.

Stress factors occurring during the growing season and potato storage, can negatively affect the quality of tubers, including an increased tendency to enzymatic darkening. Abiotic stress due to water shortage is a major factor limiting agricultural production. The purpose of the study was to determine the effect of cultivation technology based on the use of biostimulant, hydrogel and irrigation as well as storage on the propensity to darkening and the content of sugars and organic acids. The results show that genotypic and technological variability in interaction with growing season conditions had a significant (p < 0.05) effect on the oxidative potential (OP) of potato tubers. The Denar cultivar, compared to the 'Gardena', was characterized by a lower tendency to enzymatic darkening. Application of biostimulant and hydrogel generally contributed to lowering the oxidative potential of the tested cultivars. The application of anti-stress agents had no effect on organic acid content. The long-term storage caused an increase in the content of total sugars (TS) (22%), reducing sugars (RS) (49%), chlorogenic acid (ACH) (11%), and loss of ascorbic acid (AA) (6%) in the tubers which contributed to an increase in the oxidative potential of potato tubers (16%). The correlation coefficients obtained (p < 0.05) confirm the dependence of OP on the concentration of organic acids.

Soil Moisture a Posteriori Measurements Enhancement Using Ensemble Learning.

This work aimed to assess the recalibration and accurate characterization of commonly used smart soil-moisture sensors using computational methods. The paper describes an ensemble learning algorithm that boosts the performance of potato root moisture estimation and increases the simple moisture sensors' performance. It was prepared using several month-long everyday actual outdoor data and validated on the separated part of that dataset. To obtain conclusive results, two different potato varieties were grown on 24 separate plots on two distinct soil profiles and, besides natural precipitation, several different watering strategies were applied, and the experiment was monitored during the whole season. The acquisitions on every plot were performed using simple moisture sensors and were supplemented with reference manual gravimetric measurements and meteorological data. Next, a group of machine learning algorithms was tested to extract the information from this measurements dataset. The study showed the possibility of decreasing the median moisture estimation error from 2.035% for the baseline model to 0.808%, which was achieved using the Extra Trees algorithm.

Signal Transduction in Cereal Plants Struggling with Environmental Stresses: From Perception to Response.

Cereal plants under abiotic or biotic stressors to survive unfavourable conditions and continue growth and development, rapidly and precisely identify external stimuli and activate complex molecular, biochemical, and physiological responses. To elicit a response to the stress factors, interactions between reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, calcium ions, mitogen-activated protein kinases, calcium-dependent protein kinases, calcineurin B-like interacting protein kinase, phytohormones and transcription factors occur. The integration of all these elements enables the change of gene expression, and the release of the antioxidant defence and protein repair systems. There are still numerous gaps in knowledge on these subjects in the literature caused by the multitude of signalling cascade components, simultaneous activation of multiple pathways and the intersection of their individual elements in response to both single and multiple stresses. Here, signal transduction pathways in cereal plants under drought, salinity, heavy metal stress, pathogen, and pest attack, as well as the crosstalk between the reactions during double stress responses are discussed. This article is a summary of the latest discoveries on signal transduction pathways and it integrates the available information to better outline the whole research problem for future research challenges as well as for the creative breeding of stress-tolerant cultivars of cereals.

Deep potato - The hyperspectral imagery of potato cultivation with reference agronomic measurements dataset: Towards potato physiological features modeling.

The datasets provide hyperspectral imagery of potato fields with referencing agronomic measurements of several parameters. It contains also meteorological data collected on the place at the same time and some additional data on the variety of potatoes and the experiment. The experiment has been conducted in 2020 and two different potato varieties (Lady Claire and Markies) on the different soil profiles were planted and observed. During that time, on 4 different days, to provide a detailed picture of the experiment the hyperspectral imagery has been taken using a UAV and 150-band hyperspectral camera. The collected material has been later processed into 8 georeferenced ortophotomaps. To provide precise reference information that could be later used for modeling purpose the measurements of plants from each field has been performed. The registered data contains data on plant height, number of stems, stem fresh and dry mass, leaf fresh and dry mass, leaf assimilation area and LAI, number of tubers, tuber fresh and dry mass, starch content, RWC, chlorophyll a fluorescence index, the maximum quantum yield of PSII photochemistry, and the performance of electron flux.

Genomewide identification of genes involved in the potato response to drought indicates functional evolutionary conservation with Arabidopsis plants.

Potato is one of the four most important food crop plants worldwide and is strongly affected by drought. The following two pairs of potato cultivars, which are related in ancestry but show different drought tolerances, were chosen for comparative gene expression studies: Gwiazda/Oberon and Tajfun/Owacja. Comparative RNA-seq analyses of gene expression differences in the transcriptomes obtained from drought-tolerant versus drought-sensitive plants during water shortage conditions were performed. The 23 top-ranking genes were selected, 22 of which are described here as novel potato drought-responsive genes. Moreover, all but one of the potato genes selected have homologues in the Arabidopsis genome. Of the seven tested A. thaliana mutants with altered expression of the selected homologous genes, compared to the wild-type Arabidopsis plants, six showed an improved tolerance to drought. These genes encode carbohydrate transporter, mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase kinase 15 (MAPKKK15), serine carboxypeptidase-like 19 protein (SCPL19), armadillo/beta-catenin-like repeat-containing protein, high-affinity nitrate transporter 2.7 and nonspecific lipid transfer protein type 2 (nsLPT). The evolutionary conservation of the functions of the selected genes in the plant response to drought confirms the importance of these identified potato genes in the ability of plants to cope with water shortage conditions. Knowledge regarding these gene functions can be used to generate potato cultivars that are resistant to unfavourable conditions. The approach used in this work and the obtained results allowed for the identification of new players in the plant response to drought.