Aiming at doubling cotton fiber yield for the dry-land agricultural systems by co-overexpressing AVP1 and OsSIZ1

Abiotic stresses such as extreme temperatures, soil water deficit, and salinity negatively affect plant growth and development and cause significant yield loss. We previously showed that overexpression of the Arabidopsis vacuolar proton pyrophosphatase gene, AVP1, in cotton increased fiber yield when plants were exposed to salt and drought stresses. Additionally, we recently reported that overexpression of the rice SUMO E3 ligase gene, OsSIZ1, in cotton led to higher fiber yield under drought and heat conditions. In this study, we co-overexpressed AVP1 and SIZ1 to test for possible synergistic effects that could result from increased activity of these genes. We found that OsSIZ1/AVP1 plants performed significantly better than AVP1-overexpressing, OsSIZ1-overexpressing and non-transgenic wild-type plants under drought, salt, combined heat and drought, and combined salt and drought stresses, with higher fiber yields production. More importantly, our field trial studies showed that OsSIZ1/AVP1 plants produced 133% and 81% more fiber than wild-type plants in the dry-land agricultural system. Our results suggest that co-overexpression of AVP1 and SIZ1 is a viable strategy for engineering abiotic stress tolerance and improving cotton yields in low input or marginal environments.

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