Application of Trehalose Mitigates Short-Styled Flowers in Solanaceous Crops.

Trehalose is a disaccharide and is often foliar applied by farmers aiming at increasing stress resistance or crop production. However, the physiological effect of exogenously applied trehalose on crops remains obscure. Here, we explored the effect of foliar trehalose application on style length of solanaceous crops, Solanum melongena and S. lycopersicum. Trehalose application promotes pistil to stamen ratio by gaining style length. Another disaccharide consisting of two glucose molecules, maltose, showed the same effect on style length of S. lycopersicum, while monosaccharide glucose did not. Trehalose is found to affect style length through uptake via roots or interaction with rhizosphere but not through absorption by shoots in S. lycopersicum. Our study suggests that yield improvement of solanaceous crops by trehalose application under stressed conditions is brought about by suppression of the occurrence of short-styled flowers. This study suggests that trehalose holds potential to act as a plant biostimulant in preventing short-styled flowers in solanaceous crops.

Phylogenetic relationship of Paenibacillus species based on putative replication origin regions and analysis of an yheCD-like sequence found in this region.

To determine the phylogenetic relationship among Paenibacillus species, putative replication origin regions were compared. In the rsmG-gyrA region, gene arrangements in Paenibacillus species were identical to those of Bacillus species, with the exception of an open reading frame (orf14) positioned between gyrB and gyrA, which was observed only in Paenibacillus species. The orf14 product was homologous to the endospore-associated proteins YheC and YheD of Bacillus subtilis. Phylogenetic analysis based on the YheCD proteins suggested that Orf14 could be categorized into the YheC group. In the Paenibacillus genome, DnaA box clusters were found in rpmH-dnaA and dnaA-dnaN intergenic regions, known as box regions C and R, respectively; this localization was similar to that observed in B. halodurans. A phylogenetic tree based on the nucleotide sequences of the whole replication origin regions suggested that P. popilliae, P. thiaminolyticus, and P. dendritiformis are closely related species.