Research Director

Chikahiro Miyake

Graduate School of Agriculture, Kobe University
Professor

Outline

We develop in vivo analysis system to evaluate suppression activity of reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, which would contribute to early diagnosis of oxidative stress in plants. Production of ROS is enhanced, when plants suffer from environmental stress, such as high/low temperatures, drought, and salt stress. ROS oxidatively degrades many cell components and inhibits growth of plants. Plants have defense mechanisms to protect cell components from ROS oxidative attacks: first, scavenging system of ROS; second, suppression system of ROS production. These systems function, when plants are exposed to the environment stress. However, on exposition to these stresses for a long time, or to the severe ones, plants cannot recover their vitalities from stress-tolerant state, because plants lose the robustness to remove ROS. The developed diagnosis system detects the enhanced ROS production in the plants which tolerate the stress conditions, and would notify us ROS_crisis. The diagnosis system promotes us to protect plants by improving cultivating methods. Furthermore, using the diagnosis system would contribute to selection of elite plants, which have a higher activity of ROS suppression. This expands the possibility to breed new plants, which can grow under severe stress conditions.

Collaborators