Investigations of resistance to cold and hardening in vitro of Rosaceae family plants

Abstract

Dehydrin-like proteins, which are responsible for resistance to cold, were investigated in model plants, the genes of dehydrins were identified in many herbaceous and woody plants, however we know very little about the hardening and the specificity of the resistance to cold of the most part of the garden plants - the Rosaceae family plants. Therefore, the study of dehydrins of the Rosaceae family plants was performed in The Institute of Horticulture of the Lithuanian Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry. The efficacy of the hardening of strawberry (Fragaria ananassa ) , wild strawberry (F. vesca), cherry (Prunus cerasus), sweet cherry (P. avium), apple (Malus domestica) and pear (Pyrus communis) cultivars was investigated under controled cooling conditions in vitro, the ion yield of cells was measured and critical temperature of the tissue damage was calculated. It was found that the maximum hardening is reached in 4 weeks and the critical temperature of the hardened microshoots has increased approximately 1,2°C, compared to non-hardened microshoots. Protein electrophoresis and immunochemical analysis showed that the expression of the two to five dehydrin-like proteins of the different molecular mass is characteristic to investigated cultivars and the significant increase of the amount of dehydrins in hardened microshoots.