Evidence of unique and shared responses to major biotic and abiotic stresses in chickpea

Microarrays have been used extensively for transcriptional profiling of plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. However, most studies focused on either biotic or abiotic stresses, making it difficult to construe the genes that that may be common to both biotic and abiotic-stress responses. Such information may help molecular breeders to develop cultivars with broad-spectrum resistances to these stresses. A 768-featured boutique microarray was employed to compare the genes expressed by chickpea in response to drought, cold, high salinity and the fungal pathogen Ascochyta rabiei and 46, 54, 266 and 51 differentially expressed transcripts were identified, respectively. The expression of common genes indicated crosstalk in the genetic pathways involved in responses to these stress conditions. The response of ICC 3996 to A. rabiei was more similar to that of high-salinity stress than to drought or cold stress conditions.