Long-Term Soil Drought Limits Starch Accumulation by Altering Sucrose Transport and Starch Synthesis in Sweet Potato Tuberous Root.

In this study, the influences of long-term soil drought with three levels [soil-relative water content (SRWC) (75 ± 5)%, as the control; SRWC (55 ± 5)%, mild drought; SRWC (45 ± 5)%, severe drought] were investigated on sucrose-starch metabolism in sweet potato tuberous roots (TRs) by pot experiment. Compared to the control, drought stress increased soluble sugar and sucrose content by 4-60% and 9-75%, respectively, but reduced starch accumulation by 30-66% through decreasing the starch accumulate rate in TRs. In the drought-treated TRs, the inhibition of sucrose decomposition was attributed to the reduced activities of acid invertase (AI) and alkaline invertase (AKI) and the IbA-INV3 expression, rather than sucrose synthase (SuSy), consequently leading to the increased sucrose content in TRs. In addition, starch synthesis was inhibited mainly by reducing ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase (AGPase), granular starch synthase (GBSS) and starch branching enzyme (SBE) activities in TRs under drought stress, and AGPase was the rate-limiting enzyme. Furthermore, soil drought remarkably up-regulated the IbSWEET11, IbSWEET605, and IbSUT4 expressions in Jishu 26 TRs, while it down-regulated or had no significant differences in Xushu 32 and Ningzishu 1 TRs. These results suggested that the sucrose-loading capability in Jishu 26 TRs were stronger than that in Xushu 32 and Ningzishu 1 TRs. Moreover, IbA-INV3, IbAGPS1, IbAGPS2, IbGBSSI and IbSBEII play important roles in different drought-tolerant cultivars under drought stress.

Potassium deficiency causes more nitrate nitrogen to be stored in leaves for low-K sensitive sweet potato genotypes.

In order to explore the effect of potassium (K) deficiency on nitrogen (N) metabolism in sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.), a hydroponic experiment was conducted with two genotypes (Xushu 32, low-K-tolerant; Ningzishu 1, low-K-sensitive) under two K treatments (-K, <0.03 mM of K+; +K, 5 mM of K+) in the greenhouse of Jiangsu Normal University. The results showed that K deficiency decreased root, stem, and leaf biomass by 13%-58% and reduced whole plant biomass by 24%-35%. Compared to +K, the amount of K and K accumulation in sweet potato leaves and roots was significantly decreased by increasing root K+ efflux in K-deficiency-treated plants. In addition, leaf K, N, ammonium nitrogen (NH4 +-N), or nitrate nitrogen (NO3 --N) in leaves and roots significantly reduced under K deficiency, and leaf K content had a significant quadratic relationship with soluble protein, NO3 --N, or NH4 +-N in leaves and roots. Under K deficiency, higher glutamate synthase (GOGAT) activity did not increase amino acid synthesis in roots; however, the range of variation in leaves was larger than that in roots with increased amino acid in roots, indicating that the transformation of amino acids into proteins in roots and the amino acid export from roots to leaves were not inhibited. K deficiency decreased the activity of nitrate reductase (NR) and nitrite reductase (NiR), even if the transcription level of NR and NiR increased, decreased, or remained unchanged. The NO3 -/NH4 + ratio in leaves and roots under K deficiency decreased, except in Ningzishu 1 leaves. These results indicated that for Ningzishu 1, more NO3 - was stored under K deficiency in leaves, and the NR and NiR determined the response to K deficiency in leaves. Therefore, the resistance of NR and NiR activities to K deficiency may be a dominant factor that ameliorates the growth between Xushu 32 and Ningzishu 1 with different low-K sensitivities.

Controllable Microemulsion Synthesis of Hybrid TiO2-SiO2 Hollow Spheres and Au-Doped Hollow Spheres with Enhanced Photocatalytic Activity.

Hollow structures in TiO2 materials can enhance the photocatalytic properties by reducing the diffusion length and improving the accessibility of active sites for the reactants. However, existing approaches for preparing hollow TiO2 materials have two drawbacks that restrict their engineering applicability: first, a heavy reliance on templates to form a hollow structure, which makes the preparation laborious, complicated, and costly; second, difficult-to-achieve high crystallization while maintaining the small grain size in calcinated TiO2, which is crucial for enhancing photocatalytic activity. Herein, a simple, effective method is proposed that not only enables the preparation of hybrid TiO2-SiO2 hollow spheres without the template fabrication and removal process via microemulsion technology but also achieves both high crystallization and a small grain size in calcinated TiO2 at once through the calcination of amorphous TiO2 with organosilane at a high temperature of 850 °C. The prepared TiO2-SiO2 hollow spheres with tunable sizes demonstrate high photocatalytic activity with a maximum k value of 133.74 × 10-3 min-1, which is superior to commercial photocatalyst P25 (k = 114.97 × 10-3 min-1). In addition, Au can be doped in the hybrid TiO2-SiO2 shell to gain Au-doped hollow spheres that show a high k value of up to 694.14 × 10-3 min-1, which is 6 times larger than that of P25 and much better than that reported in the literature. This study not only provides an effective approach to stabilize and tune the grain growth of the TiO2 photocatalyst during calcination but also enables the simple preparation of hollow TiO2-based materials with controllable hollow nanostructures.