It is essential to develop tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) cultivars with tolerance to low temperature (LT) for reducing production cost and increasing fruit quality in winter. This study was conducted to investigate the effects of LT on 40 tomato accessions for establishing selection criteria to select accessions with LT tolerance. Tomato plants were grown in two polyethylene film greenhouses with night temperature set-points of 10℃ and 15℃. LT significantly affected the photosynthetic parameters as well as both vegetative and reproductive growth in tomato. There was a significant difference in plant height between plants grown in 10℃ and 15℃. Leaf length and width were also significantly lower in 10℃. The stem diameter was generally lower in 10℃ but 12 accessions in 10℃ had thicker stem diameter than those in 15℃. The retarded growth was due to lower photosynthetic rate in 10℃ than 15℃. Significant delay in flowering was observed among tomato accessions in 10℃. For the number of flowers, 62.5% showed the increase but 37.5% did the decrease in 10℃ among 40 tomato accessions, showing genotype specific interaction with LT. Accessions with small fruits showed reduced fruit set in 10℃; however, it was not obvious among accessions with large fruits. Interestingly, 75% of accessions showed increased chlorophyll contents in 10℃ compared to 15℃. An accession ‘VI037163’ was selected for LT tolerance based on good performance in six out of seven traits considered such as plant height, leaf length, stem diameter, chlorophyll contents, days to flowering, the number of flowers and fruit set.

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Plants have adapted to environmental challenges by expressing many plant genes in response to the stresses. Among those genes, CCCH zinc finger proteins are involved in abiotic and biotic stresses. Transgenic soybean plants overexpressing AtSZF2 were produced to investigate that its ectopic overexpression enhanced salt stress tolerance by Agrobacterium-mediated transformation using half-seed explants. Sixteen transgenic lines were chosen to analyze for T-DNA insertion and transcription levels, and most of them were confirmed as positive. In further analysis with Southern blot, stable transformation event and copy number were confirmed. Following high salinity stress on the detached leaf and whole plant of two transgenic lines (#4 and #6) revealed that the ectopic expression of AtSZF2 was correlated with stress tolerance in phenotype, ion leakage and chlorophyll content with statistical significance. In another test with 20% PEG treatment, similar tolerance of transgenic plants was observed with lower ion leakage and higher chlorophyll content, indicating that the damage of cell membrane was prevented in transgenic plants. Finally, expression of various abiotic stress-responding genes was detected by reverse transcriptase and quantitative real-time PCR analysis with the transgenic plants. It could be proposed that introduction of AtSZF2 resulted in the modulation of ABA/stress responsive gene expression in transgenic soybean plants and make them tolerant against salt stress. Considering soybean as a salt-sensitive crop and importance of salt stress tolerance in specific farming region, the introduction of AtSZF2 may provide an approach for crop improvement in soybean breeding.

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Salt stress is by far the leading environmental stress limiting crop yields worldwide. Genetic engineering techniques hold great promise for developing crop cultivars with high tolerance to salt stress. In this study, the Brassica rapa var. SUN-3061 BrOAT1 gene was transferred into tomato through Agrobacterium-mediated leaf disc transformation. The transgenic status and transgene expression of the transgenic plants was confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis and semi-quantitative one step RT-PCR analysis respectively. Subsequently, the growth status under salt stress, and physiological responses to salt stress of transgenic tomato were studied. The results showed that the transgenic plants exhibited better growth status under salt stress condition compared to the wild type plants. In physiological assessment of salt stress tolerance, transgenic plants showed more dry matter accumulation and maintained significantly higher levels of leaf chlorophyll content along with increasing levels of salt stress than the wild type plants. This study shows that BrOAT1 is a candidate gene in the engineering of crops for enhanced salt stress tolerance.

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• Overexpression of OsDUF868.12 enhances salt tolerance in rice
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