A group of scientists developed a potato that emits light at the
earliest stages of stress. The breakthrough can help give warning and
provide enough time for farmers to address the crop's problems before it
is lost to abiotic stress.

The scientists chose to modify the Irish potato (/Solanum tuberosum/) by
establishing a whole-plant redox imaging that makes the potato express
the chloroplast-targeted redox-sensitive green fluorescence protein 2
(roGFP2). The gene expresses a fluorescent protein as a response to the
presence of reactive oxygen chemical molecules that the plants produce
to manage stress. Therefore, the more stress that the potato
experiences, the more reactive oxygen species it produces causing it to
make more of the fluorescent protein. When put under a highly sensitive
fluorescent camera, the stress-induced engineered potato gives a bright,
fluorescent glow. According to the scientists, they were also able to
document that the accumulation of the reactive oxygen species occurred
in the early phase of the plant's response to stressful conditions like
drought, extreme temperature, and high light.

Based on the findings, the team concluded that the whole-plant redox
imaging can help researchers understand the crop's stress responses,
which in turn can be applied to agricultural research specifically in
improving phenotyping in breeding programs and early detection of field
stress responses.

Sensing stress responses in potato with whole-plant redox imaging |
Plant Physiology | Oxford Academic (oup.com)
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