Announcements

The scientists from the Department of Plant Physiology of the Estonian University of Life Science together with the researchers from the Uppsala BioCenter, SLU, Sweden, and the Institute of Evolution, Haifa University, Israel demonstrated that bacterial isolates from extreme conditions enhanced the drought tolerance of wheat. The bacteria were isolated from North-Israeli ‘Evolution Canyon’, from the roots of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) grown on gneiss rock at Mt Lemmon, Arizona, USA and from salty rice (Oryza sativa) rhizosphere at Tina plain, Giza, Egypt, and were demonstrated to form a biofilm on wheat roots resulting in enhanced absorption of water from dry soil.

Under a severe drought stress, the bacterial priming enhanced wheat productivity by 78% and increased the survivorship by five-fold. A novel screening method was developed for rapid assessment of the success of bacterial priming. The new method is based on monitoring intensity and composition of plant stress-elicited volatiles that were found to be a highly sensitive indicator of priming and drought stress. These results open an exciting opportunity for agricultural practices in large drought-prone areas that have been considered not suitable for agriculture in the past and thus, provide a promising way for increasing the future food security of the globe. The results of this investigation were published in the May issue of the journal PlosONE (Timmusk et al., 2014, vol. 9, e96086).