Abscisic acid deficiency prevents development of freezing tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh.

Abscisic acid (ABA) has been implicated as a regulatory factor in plant cold acclimation. In the present work, the cold-acclimation properties of an ABA-deficient mutant (aba) of Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh. were analyzed. The mutant had apparently lost its capability to cold acclimate: the freezing tolerance of the mutant was not increased by low temperature treatment but stayed at the level of the nonacclimated wild type. The mutational defect could be complemented by the addition of exogenous ABA to the growth medium, restoring freezing tolerance close to the wild-type level. This suggests that ABA might have a central regulatory function in the development of freezing tolerance in plants. Cold acclimation has been previously correlated to the induction of a specific set of proteins that have been suggested to have a role in freezing tolerance. However, these proteins were also induced in the aba mutant by low temperature treatment.