title: Interact to survive: Phyllobacterium brassicacearum improves Arabidopsis tolerance to severe water deficit and growth recovery.
abstract: Mutualistic bacteria can alter plant phenotypes and confer new abilities to plants. Some plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) are known to improve both plant growth and tolerance to multiple stresses, including drought, but reports on their effects on plant survival under severe water deficits are scarce. We investigated the effect of Phyllobacterium brassicacearum STM196 strain, a PGPR isolated from the rhizosphere of oilseed rape, on survival, growth and physiological responses of Arabidopsis thaliana to severe water deficits combining destructive and non-destructive high-throughput phenotyping. Soil inoculation with STM196 greatly increased the survival rate of A. thaliana under several scenarios of severe water deficit. Photosystem II efficiency, assessed at the whole-plant level by high-throughput fluorescence imaging (Fv/Fm), was related to the probability of survival and revealed that STM196 delayed plant mortality. Inoculated surviving plants tolerated more damages to the photosynthetic tissues through a delayed dehydration and a better tolerance to low water status. Importantly, STM196 allowed a better recovery of plant growth after rewatering and stressed plants reached a similar biomass at flowering than non-stressed plants. Our results highlight the importance of plant-bacteria interactions in plant responses to severe drought and provide a new avenue of investigations to improve drought tolerance in agriculture.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire d'Ecophysiologie des Plantes sous Stress Environnementaux (LEPSE), UMR759, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique-SupAgro, Montpellier, France; Laboratoire des Symbioses Tropicales et Méditerranéennes (LSTM), UMR113, Université Montpellier 2-IRD-CIRAD-INRA-SupAgro, Montpellier, France.
authors.forename: Justine
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bresson
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire d'Ecophysiologie des Plantes sous Stress Environnementaux (LEPSE), UMR759, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique-SupAgro, Montpellier, France; Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: François
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Vasseur
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire d'Ecophysiologie des Plantes sous Stress Environnementaux (LEPSE), UMR759, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique-SupAgro, Montpellier, France.
authors.forename: Myriam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dauzat
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire d'Ecophysiologie des Plantes sous Stress Environnementaux (LEPSE), UMR759, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique-SupAgro, Montpellier, France; Laboratoire des Symbioses Tropicales et Méditerranéennes (LSTM), UMR113, Université Montpellier 2-IRD-CIRAD-INRA-SupAgro, Montpellier, France.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Labadie
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire des Symbioses Tropicales et Méditerranéennes (LSTM), UMR113, Université Montpellier 2-IRD-CIRAD-INRA-SupAgro, Montpellier, France.
authors.forename: Fabrice
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Varoquaux
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire des Symbioses Tropicales et Méditerranéennes (LSTM), UMR113, Université Montpellier 2-IRD-CIRAD-INRA-SupAgro, Montpellier, France.
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Touraine
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire d'Ecophysiologie des Plantes sous Stress Environnementaux (LEPSE), UMR759, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique-SupAgro, Montpellier, France.
authors.forename: Denis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Vile
mesh_terms: D000222:Adaptation, Physiological; D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000382:microbiology* / Q000502:physiology*; D018533:Biomass; D010788:Photosynthesis; D059127:Phyllobacteriaceae; D013312:Stress, Physiological; D013559:Symbiosis; D014867:Water
chemical_list: D014867:Water