Drought stress is a crucial environmental factor for plant survival, and the development of drought-tolerant varieties is one of the goals of all cultivated plant researchers. In particular, the seedling stage is important for plant growth and development and is also the period most affected by drought. We investigated the initial response to drought stress in seedlings of two species of poplar (Populus alba × Populus davidiana and Populus davidiana) that phenotypically differed in drought tolerance. Comparative analysis in terms of shoot height, photosynthetic pigments, soluble sugars, antioxidants, proline, soluble protein, malondialdehyde (MDA), and hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) contents was used to measure the physiological and biochemical characteristics of drought stress, and drought-related genetic changes were also examined. Significant changes in shoot height, chlorophyll fluorescence, chlorophyll contents, MDA and H₂O₂ appeared more adversely in Populus alba × Populus davidiana than in Populus davidiana, whereas reductions in soluble protein, carotenoids, superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT), which are indicators related to drought tolerance, appeared less in Populus davidiana. The change pattern of genes related to electron transfer and H₂O₂ production were almost similar in the two species, and among the drought response genes, lipid transfer protein 3 (LTP3) was greatly upregulated only in Populus davidiana. In the initial response to drought stress of both poplars, Populus davidiana, which had good antioxidant maintenance, showed better drought tolerance than Populus alba × Populus davidiana, which had a faster response to osmotic balance control.

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Squash (Cucurbita moschata D.) is an economically important vegetable of the Cucurbitaceae family. The genetic purity of commercial hybrid seed is crucial for the success of hybrid seed production. The molecular markers like single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) can efficiently and cost-effectively distinguish the genetic differences among F₁ hybrid cultivars. Therefore, in this study, we used ‘Fluidigm SNP Genotyping’ assay using 27 SNPs to distinguish and purity analysis of registered commercial F₁ hybrid cultivars and F₁ breeding lines of squash. Of these, eight SNP markers, including CMo-A01, CMo-A02, CMo-A04, CMo-A05, CMo-A12, CMo-A16, CMo-A20 and CMo-A25 can successfully identified heterozygotes from the registered commercial F₁ hybrid squash cultivars with 100% accuracy and partial contamination was detected for F₁ hybrid squash breeding lines which resulted due to outcrossing. Moreover, the HRM analysis of a registered commercial F₁ hybrid cultivar ‘Parangsae’ with CMo-A03 SNP marker showed 96.30-100% purity of the cultivar. Our results suggest that the ‘Fluidigm SNP Genotyping’ technology could be a rapid and cost-effective method for cultivar differentiation and genetic purity analysis of F₁ hybrids and squash cultivars.

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Targeted genome editing using CRISPR/Cas nucleases has become the standard approach for creating mutant plants. Significant progress has been made to enhance the editing efficiencies through optimizing CRISPR/Cas expression, including applying heat stress. In this study, we used heat stress to enhance the Potato virus X (PVX)-mediated CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis in Nicotiana benthamiana. We show that heat stress at 4-5 days after PVX inoculation effectively increases the mutagenesis efficiency of Cas9 nuclease. We observed up to a 5-8% increase in mutation efficiency depending on the sgRNA construct when heat stress is applied to the pPVX-Cas9::sgRNA infiltrated samples. Furthermore, analysis of the effect of the heat stress on the pattern of mutation types in the target gene regions showed no obvious changes in CRISPR/Cas9 induced mutagenesis pattern between heat stress treated and no heat stress treated samples. Overall, our experiments demonstrate that heat stress treatment at the optimal time after viral inoculation is most effective in increasing the PVX-mediated CRISPR/Cas9 editing efficiency in plants.

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The number of four-seeded pods is a plant trait that is of great interest in terms of increasing soybean production. The
objective
of this study was to understand the agronomic characteristics of four-seeded pods of FS1159, which contain a significantly higher ratio of four-seeded pods than do other genotypes. FS1159 showed a significantly lower ratio of one- and two-seeded pods and a significantly higher ratio of three- (39.6%) and four- (11.3%) seeded pods than did the four check soybeans. The average values of the traits of FS1159 in this study were: plant height, 58.1 cm; the number of nodes, 15.7; the number of branches, 6.5; and 100-seed weight, 20.3 g. These results indicate that FS1159 can be used as a new genetic resource to explore the traits of four-seeded-pod and improve the soybean yield.