Drought and salt stresses impose major constraints on soybean production worldwide. However, improving agronomically valuable soybean traits under drought conditions can be challenging due to trait complexity and multiple factors that influence yield. Here, we identified a nuclear factor Y C subunit (NF-YC) family transcription factor member, GmNF-YC14, which formed a heterotrimer with GmNF-YA16 and GmNF-YB2 to activate the GmPYR1-mediated abscisic acid (ABA) signalling pathway to regulate stress tolerance in soybean. Notably, we found that CRISPR/Cas9-generated GmNF-YC14 knockout mutants were more sensitive to drought than wild-type soybean plants. Furthermore, field trials showed that overexpression of GmNF-YC14 or GmPYR1 could increase yield per plant, grain plumpness, and stem base circumference, thus indicating improved adaptation of soybean plants to drought conditions. Taken together, our findings expand the known functional scope of the NF-Y transcription factor functions and raise important questions about the integration of ABA signalling pathways in plants. Moreover, GmNF-YC14 and GmPYR1 have potential for application in the improvement of drought tolerance in soybean plants.

中文翻译：

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NF-Y-PYR模块整合脱落酸信号通路调节植物抗逆性

干旱和盐胁迫对全球大豆生产造成重大限制。然而，由于性状复杂性和影响产量的多种因素，在干旱条件下改善具有农艺价值的大豆性状可能具有挑战性。在这里，我们鉴定了一个核因子 YC 亚基 (NF-YC) 家族转录因子成员 GmNF-YC14，它与 GmNF-YA16 和 GmNF-YB2 形成异源三聚体，以激活 GmPYR1 介导的脱落酸 (ABA) 信号通路来调节大豆的抗逆性。值得注意的是，我们发现 CRISPR/Cas9 产生的 GmNF-YC14敲除突变体比野生型大豆植物对干旱更敏感。此外，田间试验表明GmNF-YC14或GmPYR1的过表达可以增加单株产量、籽粒丰满度和茎基周长，从而表明大豆植物对干旱条件的适应能力有所提高。总之，我们的研究结果扩大了 NF-Y 转录因子功能的已知功能范围，并提出了有关植物中 ABA 信号通路整合的重要问题。此外，GmNF-YC14和GmPYR1在提高大豆植物耐旱性方面具有应用潜力。