Drought stress promotes xylem differentiation by modulating the interaction between cytokinin and jasmonic acid.

Drought stress provokes jasmonic acid (JA) signaling, which mediates plant stress responses; moreover, growing numbers of studies suggest that JA is involved in the modulation of root development under drought stress. Recently, we showed that JA promotes differentiation of xylem from procambial cells in Arabidopsis roots. Further molecular and genetic approaches revealed that the effect of JA on xylem development is caused by suppression of cytokinin responses, suggesting that JA antagonistically interacts with cytokinin to modulate xylem development. Here, we showed that, similar to JA, drought stress promotes xylem development. This suggests that the antagonistic interaction between JA and cytokinin is involved in drought-mediated xylem development, a hypothesis supported by the observation that drought stress increases JA responses and decreases cytokinin responses. Based on these findings, we propose that drought stress promotes xylem development, and the antagonistic interaction between JA and cytokinin is deeply involved in this process.