Phenotyping reproductive stage chilling and frost tolerance in wheat using targeted metabolome and lipidome profiling

Frost events lead to A$360 million of yield losses annually to the Australian wheat industry, making improvement of chilling and frost tolerance an important trait for breeding.

This study aimed to use metabolomics and lipidomics to explore genetic variation in acclimation potential to chilling and to identify metabolite markers for chilling tolerance in wheat.

We established a controlled environment screening assay that is able to reproduce field rankings of wheat germplasm for chilling and frost tolerance. This assay, together with targeted metabolomics and lipidomics approaches, were used to compare metabolite and lipid levels in flag leaves of two wheat varieties with contrasting chilling tolerance.

The sensitive variety Wyalkatchem showed a strong reduction in amino acids after the first cold night, followed by accumulation of osmolytes such as fructose, glucose, putrescine and shikimate over a 4-day period. Accumulation of osmolytes is indicative of acclimation to water stress in Wyalkatchem. This response was not observed for tolerant variety Young. The two varieties also displayed significant differences in lipid accumulation. Variation in two lipid clusters, resulted in a higher unsaturated to saturated lipid ratio in Young after 4 days cold treatment and the lipids PC(34:0), PC(34:1), PC(35:1), PC(38:3), and PI(36:4) were the main contributors to the unsaturated to saturated ratio change. This indicates that Young may have superior ability to maintain membrane fluidity following cold exposure, thereby avoiding membrane damage and water stress observed for Wyalkatchem.

Our study suggests that metabolomics and lipidomics markers could be used as an alternative phenotyping method to discriminate wheat varieties with differences in cold acclimation.