Nonphotochemical quenching changes with abiotic stressor and developmental stages

Abstract

Nonphotochemical quenching (NPQ) is a critical photoprotective mechanism in plants, safeguarding photosystem II (PSII) and PSI from photodamage under abiotic stress. However, it is unclear if different stressors lead to similar NPQ phenotypes, and the magnitude of natural variation (between and within plant species) in NPQ response to abiotic stress is unknown. Testing a semi-high-throughput leaf-disc approach for examining the NPQ kinetics parameters, we investigated NPQ under chilling, drought and low nitrogen stress across multiple species and/or genotypes. Our results show substantial variation in NPQ phenotypes across species, genotypes and treatments. In C3 crops, tobacco and soybean, multiple NPQ parameters generally increased under chilling and drought, while in C4 crops, maize and sorghum, NPQ traits were more variable including a decrease of multiple NPQ parameters. Low-N stress revealed genotype- and developmental stage-specific effects on NPQ, potentially reflecting distinct adaptive strategies and regulatory changes in NPQ stress response. A significant effect of ecotype and stress treatment was detected on most NPQ kinetics traits in Arabidopsis thaliana , however, the interaction between ecotype and treatment was stronger in drought than in chilling. Differential regulation of NPQ could be associated with a combination of changes in proton motive, ATPase synthase activity, and PSI redox state. Our findings highlight that interpreting relative changes in NPQ under abiotic stress is inherently complex and demands a broader integration of physiological data across multiple regulatory layers.

Plant phenotyping relevance

半高速スループットの葉ディスク法を用いてNPQ動態形質を測定し、複数種・遺伝子型・ストレス条件で適用しているため、植物生理フェノタイピング手法の実質的応用と判断します。

Code and data availability

The article describes NPQ phenotyping measured with FluorCam, LI-6800/LI-600, and MultispeQ, with data analysis in MATLAB, but no public phenotype dataset, image repository, author code, or model deposit is mentioned. The only URL (https://photosynq.org) is the generic PhotosynQ web application used as a measurement/分析

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