Abiotic stress is the major limiting factor of plant growth and crop yields. Traditional plant breeding has achieved significant results but the process is rather time- consuming and expensive. Plant biotechnology appears to be an attractive alternative in respect of the possibility for direct introduction of single genes into crops. The group of osmoprotectants is of particular interest for improving abiotic stress tolerance of crops. In the recent years, the efforts in the area gained considerable results. The studies performed at ABI will be discussed in relation with the major achievements elsewhere and the possibilities for elucidation of the complex role of osmoprotectants in abiotic stress tolerance and the practical breeding.

Water shortage is a major factor that harms agriculture and ecosystems worldwide. Plants display various levels of tolerance to water deficit, but only resurrection plants can survive full desiccation of their vegetative tissues. Haberlea rhodopensis, an endemic plant of the Balkans, is one of the few resurrection plants found in Europe. We performed transcriptomic analyses of this species under slight, severe and full dehydration and recovery to investigate the dynamics of gene expression and associate them with existing physiological and metabolomics data. De novo assembly yielded a total of 142,479 unigenes with an average sequence length of 1034 nt. Among them, 18,110 unigenes were differentially expressed. Hierarchical clustering of all differentially expressed genes resulted in seven clusters of dynamic expression patterns. The most significant expression changes, involving more than 15,000 genes, started at severe dehydration (~ 20% relative water content) and were partially maintained at full desiccation (< 10% relative water content). More than a hundred pathways were enriched and functionally organized in a GO/pathway network at the severe dehydration stage. Transcriptomic changes in key pathways were analyzed and discussed in relation to metabolic processes, signal transduction, quality control of protein and DNA repair in this plant during dehydration and rehydration. Reprograming of the transcriptome occurs during severe dehydration, resulting in a profound alteration of metabolism toward alternative energy supply, hormone signal transduction, and prevention of DNA/protein damage under very low cellular water content, underlying the observed physiological and metabolic responses and the resurrection behavior of H. rhodopensis.

The resurrection plant Haberlea rhodopensis was used to study dynamics of drought response of photosynthetic machinery parallel with changes in primary metabolism. A relation between leaf water content and photosynthetic performance was established, enabling us to perform a non-destructive evaluation of the plant water status during stress. Spectroscopic analysis of photosynthesis indicated that, at variance with linear electron flow involving photosystem (PS) I and II, cyclic electron flow around PSI remains active till almost full dry state at the expense of the linear electron flow, due to the changed protein organization of photosynthetic apparatus. We suggest that, this activity could have a photoprotective role and prevent a complete drop in adenosine triphosphate (ATP), in the absence of linear electron flow, to fuel specific energy-dependent processes necessary for the survival of the plant, during the late states of desiccation. The NMR fingerprint show significant metabolic changes in several pathways. Due to the declining of linear electron flow accompanied by biosynthetic reactions during desiccation, a reduction of the ATP pool during drought was observed, which was fully and quickly recovered after plants rehydration. We found a decline of valine accompanied by lipid degradation during stress, likely to provide alternative carbon sources for sucrose accumulation at late stages of desiccation. This accumulation, as well as the increased levels of glycerophosphodiesters during drought stress could provide osmoprotection to the cells.