Double the action: multimodal action of a CONSTANS-LIKE protein enhances stress tolerance in soybean

Abstract

Climate change has intensified the damage caused to agricultural production by abiotic stress conditions such as drought, salinity, freezing, and flooding. More comprehensive understanding of plant stress tolerance mechanisms is crucial for developing future-proof crop varieties.

CONSTANS-LIKE (COL) proteins, belonging to the B-box (BBX) family of transcription factors, are well known for their role in light-regulated developmental responses such as photomorphogenesis and photoperiodic flowering (Yadav et al., 2020). However, the role of these proteins in abiotic and biotic stress responses is poorly understood. In this issue of Plant Physiology, Xu et al. (2022) report that GmCOL1a, a COL/BBX protein that promotes flowering in soybean (Glycine max), also enhances tolerance against drought and salinity stress.