Drought has become a major stress for agricultural productivity in temperate regions, such as central Europe. Thus, information on how crop plants respond to drought is important to develop tolerant hybrids and to ensure yield stability. Posttranscriptional regulation through changed protein abundances is an important mechanism of short-term response to stress events that has not yet been widely exploited in breeding strategies. Here, we investigated the response to repeated drought exposure of a tolerant and a sensitive maize hybrid in order to understand general protein abundance changes induced by singular drought or repeated drought events. In general, drought affected protein abundance of multiple pathways in the plant. We identified starch metabolism, aquaporin abundance, PSII proteins and histones as strongly associated with typical drought-induced phenotypes such as increased membrane leakage, osmolality or effects on stomatal conductance and assimilation rate. In addition, we found a strong effect of drought on nutrient assimilation, especially the sulfur metabolism. In general, pre-experience of mild drought before exposure to a more severe drought resulted in visible adaptations resulting in dampened phenotypes as well as lower magnitude of protein abundance changes.

在中欧等温带地区，干旱已成为农业生产力的主要压力。因此，有关农作物如何应对干旱的信息对于开发耐性杂交品种并确保产量稳定非常重要。通过改变蛋白丰度进行转录后调控是对应激事件的短期反应的重要机制，目前尚未在育种策略中得到广泛利用。在这里，我们调查了耐受性玉米和敏感玉米杂种对反复干旱暴露的响应，以了解单一干旱或反复干旱事件引起的一般蛋白质丰度变化。通常，干旱会影响植物中多个途径的蛋白质丰度。我们确定了淀粉代谢，水通道蛋白的丰度，PSII蛋白和组蛋白与典型的干旱诱导表型密切相关，例如增加的膜泄漏，重量克分子渗透压浓度或对气孔导度和同化率的影响。此外，我们发现干旱对养分吸收特别是硫代谢的影响很大。通常，在经历更严重的干旱之前先经历轻度干旱，这会导致可见的适应性变化，从而导致表型减弱以及蛋白质丰度变化幅度降低。