Sugarcane is one of the most crucial sugar crops globally that supplies
the main raw material for sugar and ethanol production, but drought
stress causes a severe decline in sugarcane yield worldwide.

Enhancing sugarcane drought resistance and reducing yield and quality
losses is an ongoing challenge in sugarcane genetic improvement. Here,
we introduced a/Tripidium arundinaceum/dehydration-responsive
element-binding transcription factor (/TaDREB2B/) behind the
drought-responsible/RD29A/promoter into a commercial sugarcane cultivar
FN95-1702 and subsequently conducted a series of drought tolerance
experiments and investigation of agronomic and quality traits.

Physiological analysis indicated that/Prd29A: TaDREB2B/transgenic
sugarcane significantly confers drought tolerance in both the
greenhouses and the field by enhancing water retention capacity and
reducing membrane damage without compromising growth. These transgenic
plants exhibit obvious improvements in yield performance and various
physiological traits under the limited-irrigation condition in the
field, such as increasing 41.9% yield and 44.4% the number of ratooning
sugarcane seedlings. Moreover,/Prd29A: TaDREB2B/transgenic plants do not
penalize major quality traits, including sucrose content, gravity
purity, Brix, etc.

Collectively, our results demonstrated that
the/Prd29A-TaDREB2B/promoter-transgene combination will be a useful
biotechnological tool for the increase of drought tolerance and the
minimum of yield losses in sugarcane.

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