992 STRESS TOLERANCE INDUCTION: THE ROLE OF ABA AND HEAT STABLE PROTEINS
Plants acclimate to abiotic stresses, e.g. heat, freezing drought and salinity, in response to environmental cues such as temperature, daylength and water. Plants can respond within minutes to the cue e.g. heat tolerance or within hours or days, e.g. drought and freezing tolerance. Heat shock proteins are measurable within 20 to 30 minutes of a heat stress and the plants aclimate almost immediately. In contrast, proteins related to freezing tolerance are measurable within hours but days are required before a measurable increase in freezing tolerance can be detected. In almost all stresses it appears that the environmental cue effects the water status of the plant which in turn affects the level of endogenous abscisic acid (ABA). ABA has been implicated to ameliorate the stress by inducing genes to produce stress proteins. There is a certain degree of commodity between stresses in ragards to stress proteins, however each stress has their own unique set of stress proteins. For example heat shock proteins did not confer stress tolerance. Proteins involved in water and osmotic stress tolerance share a high degree of commonality. I” all stresses a unique class of proteins are synthesized which are classified as heat or boiling stable (do not coagulate at 100°). These proteins are suggested to be involved in the stress response. Many of these heat stable proteins are induced by ABA alone or in combination with jasmonic acid (JA). Analogs of ABA which are either slowly converted to ABA or are degraded slowly or taken up at a faster rate than ABA have been tested for the efficacy in inducing the stress responses. Analogs have also been identified which inhibit the ABA induced response. How these analogs may have practical significance will be discussed.