Kim and Seki say that this project has led to several important discoveries.
Not only did they discover that external application of vinegar can enhance drought tolerance in the Arabidopsis plant, but they also found that this pathway is regulated epigenetically and conserved in common crops such as maize, rice, and wheat.
Initial testing in normal Arabidopsis under drought stress showed that genomic-wide expression of hda6 was linked to activation of the biological pathway that produces acetate, the main component of vinegar.
In the mutated plants, they found that under the same conditions, this pathway was activated even more, and plants produced larger amounts of acetate.
The team next measured acetate levels in normal plants and found that the amount of acetate produced by plants during drought directly correlated to how well they survived.
These results predicted that increasing the amount of acetate in plants could help them survive drought.
The team tested this hypothesis by growing normal plants in drought conditions and treatment with acetic acid, other organic acids, or water.
We expect that external application of acetate to plants will be a useful, simple, and less expensive way to enhance drought tolerance in a variety of plants."
Nature Plants.
DOI: 10.1038/nplants.2017.97