Out of the 25 genes from this list with a strong environmental regulation, 10 belonged to clusters in group 2 with a low field correlation only in the dry season, indicating a drought effect on expression and one gene belonged to a cluster in group 4, and showed more difference in mean expression between fields during the dry season.
All the other accessions had a clear decrease in biomass production under stress conditions, indicating a drought-susceptible response (Foito et al. 2009).
The average leaf biomass (Fig. 3) of accessions PI418701 and PI462336 was slightly decreased in leaf development under stress conditions, indicating a drought-tolerant response for clones within these accessions.
However, introducing stress-inducible genes does not always result in a stress tolerant plant because the induction may indicate a highly responsive drought tolerance mechanism or simply a particular sensibility to drought (Price et al. 2002).
No local weather data have been collected for several years, and without a long-term record it is difficult to spot trends that might indicate a return of drought conditions, said Dr. Barlow at Columbia.
Over-represented functional annotations indicate a role in drought stress and nucleosome assembly.
However, the results derived from our meta-analysis, indicate that a drought period lasting longer than approximately 30 35 days, combined with a strong drought intensity (a 3 4 cm water table decline per day or more) can have a detrimental effect on both biomass and seedling survival.
Judged by various drought-related statistics (ADF, MDD, MDS, and MDI), Northeast China and Southwest China drought regions both indicate a relatively high degree of drought frequency and intensity.
Our results indicate a differential influence of drought stress on mechanisms for compatible osmolyte accumulation as an early stress response in chickpea.
The observed increase in T2 values with drought could therefore indicate a reduction of membrane permeability.
