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Spatiotemporal manipulation of auxin biosynthesis in cotton ovule epidermal cells enhances fiber yield and quality

Nature Biotechnology volume 29, pages 453–458 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

The capacity of conventional breeding to simultaneously improve the yield and quality of cotton fiber is limited1. The accumulation of the plant hormone indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) in cotton fiber initials prompted us to investigate the effects of genetically engineering increased IAA levels in the ovule epidermis. Targeted expression of the IAA biosynthetic gene iaaM, driven by the promoter of the petunia MADS box gene Floral Binding protein 7 (FBP7)2, increased IAA levels in the epidermis of cotton ovules at the fiber initiation stage. This substantially increased the number of lint fibers, an effect that was confirmed in a 4-year field trial. The lint percentage of the transgenic cotton, an important component of fiber yield, was consistently higher in our transgenic plants than in nontransgenic controls, resulting in a >15% increase in lint yield. Fiber fineness was also notably improved.

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Figure 1: Cellular localization of IAA in cotton ovules and the effect of an IAA transport inhibitor on fiber initiation.
Figure 2: Targeted expression of iaaM driven by FBP7 promoter in the epidermis of ovules increases IAA accumulation in transgenic cotton.
Figure 3: Comparison of fiber initial density, number of mature fibers per seed, and variation of lint percentage and micronaire value over five sampling times in transgenic cotton plants and nontransgenic controls.

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Acknowledgements

We are indebted to X. Jiang (Beijing Forestry University, China) for technical assistance on plant hormone analysis, and to D. Zhang (USDA/ARS, BARC/PSI/SPCL) for his kind help in the statistical analysis of field data. We are grateful to X. Qiu (Department of Food & Bioproduct Sciences, University of Saskatchewan, Canada), J. Huang (Monsanto Company, USA) and J. Jacobs (Bayer CropScience, Belgium), Z. Pei (Department of Biology, Duke University, USA) and C. Lin (Department of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology, University of California, USA), G. Xia (Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy Of Science) for their critical comments on the manuscript. This work has been supported by grant 2010CB126000 (to Y.P.) from the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, and by grant 30530490 (to Y.P.) from the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China.

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Author notes

  1. Mi Zhang and Xuelian Zheng: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Biotechnology and Crop Quality Improvement of Ministry of Agriculture, Biotechnology Research Center, Southwest University, Chongqing, P.R. China

    Mi Zhang, Xuelian Zheng, Shuiqing Song, Qiwei Zeng, Lei Hou, Demou Li, Juan Zhao, Yuan Wei, Xianbi Li, Ming Luo, Yuehua Xiao, Xiaoying Luo & Yan Pei

  2. Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA

    Jinfa Zhang

  3. School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, P.R. China

    Chengbin Xiang

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  1. Mi Zhang
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Contributions

M.Z. performed field trials, in situ hybridization and quantified IAA content; X.Z. performed greenhouse experiments and quantified IAA content; S.S. performed cotton transformation and field trials; Q.Z. and Y.W. performed cotton transformation; J.Z. and X.L. performed field trials; L.H., D.L., M.L., Y.X. and X.L. performed vector construction and promoter analysis; J.Z. performed field data analysis; C.X. designed the hybridization experiment; Y.P. designed experiments and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Yan Pei.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Tables 1–6 and Supplementary Figs. 1–10 (PDF 896 kb)

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Zhang, M., Zheng, X., Song, S. et al. Spatiotemporal manipulation of auxin biosynthesis in cotton ovule epidermal cells enhances fiber yield and quality. Nat Biotechnol 29, 453–458 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.1843

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