ASGSB 1999 Annual Meeting Abstracts

EFFECTS OF BENZOTHIADIAZOLE (BTH) ON PGC-GROWN RICE AND BRASSICA PLANTS. C. Gartner¹, E. Hilaire², J.A. Guikema¹ and J.E. Leach². ¹Division of Biology, Ackert Hall and ²Department of Plant Pathology, Throckmorton Plant Sciences Center, Manhattan, KS.

Previous results from the SOYPAT experiment, flown during the CUE mission in Nov. 1997, have shown that soybean seedlings were more susceptible to fungal infection during spaceflight. Therefore, it is of crucial importance to provide plants with resistance to pathogens to enhance crop productivity in space.

For that purpose, rice and Brassica rapa were grown in the plant growth chambers (PGC), a space shuttle-approved hardware. Seventy-five surface-sterilized seeds per PGC were planted in pockets, made from Kimwipes and fitted into floral foam, in the same fashion as the BPAC/CUE experiment. The seeds were hydrated with 1x Hoagland’s solution. In half of the PGCs, this solution was augmented with 0.3 mM benzothiadiazole (BTH), a salicylic acid analogue know to induce defense response genes. Plants were rehydrated with the same solutions after one week of growth. Two and 4 days after rehydration, leaves, shoots and roots were harvested and frozen in lN2.

Four days after rehydration, we obtained about 0.5g of rice cotyledon leaves, 1.5g of first leaves, 2.2g of shoots and 2g of roots from each PGC. This biomass was sufficient to obtain enough RNA to perform several Northern blot analyses. We will present and discuss the effects of BTH on the expression of several defense response genes determined by Northern blot analysis in both rice and Brassica plants. (Supported by a Howard Hughes Medical Institute research fellowship and by the Kansas NASA-EPSCoR program).

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