Engineering vascular potassium transport increases yield and drought resilience of cassava
Cassava (Manihot esculenta) is an important crop for food security in the tropics, particularly for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, where yields are often severely limited by pathogen pressure, nutrient deficiency and water scarcity. We expressed a non-rectifying Arabidopsis thaliana potassium (K<sup>+</sup>) channel gene version, AKT2<sub>var</sub>, in the vascular tissue of cassava plants. The transgenic cassava plants had higher electron transport and CO<sub>2</sub> assimilation rates, a higher bulk flow velocity and increased source-sink carbohydrate transport, as demonstrated by comparative <sup>11</sup>C-positron emission tomography and tissue-specific metabolite profiling. Cassava storage root yield was significantly increased in greenhouse experiments and in a multi-year field trial conducted under subtropical conditions. AKT2<sub>var</sub> plants were also more tolerant of drought stress and had higher storage root yield. Targeted alteration of K<sup>+</sup> transport is therefore a promising strategy to improve cassava productivity without additional fertilizer input and in climate-adverse growing conditions.
Authors
- Shu Heng Chang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0584-4152)
- Ralf Metzner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6164-1141)
- Wilhelm Gruissem (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1872-2998)
- Marvin J. Fritzler (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1652-6608)
- Leo Bellin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6003-2931)
- H. Ekkehard Neuhaus (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5443-7123)
- Wolfgang Zierer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0397-8296)
- Robert Koller (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7251-7242)
- Juan Quirós-Vargas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6524-7504)
- Uwe Sonnewald (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1835-5339)
- Uwe Rascher (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9993-4588)
- Christian E. Lamm (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8205-1909)
- Gregor Huber (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1250-8165)
- Onno Muller (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0473-5632)
- Mercedes Thieme (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-3002-7400)
- Ravi B. Anjanappa (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-5559-1420)
- Tsan-Hung Chiu
Institutions
- University of Bonn (DE)
- University of Kaiserslautern (DE)
- National Chung Hsing University (TW)
- Forschungszentrum Jülich (DE)
- Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (DE)
- Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (CH)
- ETH Zurich (CH)
- University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern (DE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Plants
- Published
- 2025-12-17
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-025-02159-7
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Cassava research and cyanide
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.75