Stress Combinations and their Interactions in Plants Database (SCIPDb): A one-stop resource for understanding combined stress responses in plants

ABSTRACT

We have developed Stress Combinations and their Interactions in Plants Database (SCIPDb; http://www.nipgr.ac.in/scipdb.php), a compendium and interactive platform offering information on both morpho-physio-biochemical (phenome) and molecular (transcriptome) responses of plants to different combinations of stresses. To delineate the effects of various stress combinations/categories on yield in major agricultural crops, global phenome data from 939 studies was analyzed and results showed that yield was affected to the greatest extent under the abiotic–abiotic stress category, followed by the biotic–biotic and abiotic–biotic stress categories. In the abiotic–abiotic stress category, drought–heat, heat–salinity, and ozone–UV are the major stress combinations causing high yield loss in barley, wheat, soybean, and quinoa crops. In the abiotic–biotic stress category, the salinity–weed stress combination causes highest yield loss in rice crop. In the biotic–biotic stress category, the nematode–fungus combination was most detrimental, causing considerable yield losses in potato, groundnut, and sugar beet crops. Transcriptome datasets from 36 studies hosted in SCIPDb identified novel genes. Thus far, these genes have not been known to play a role in combined stress. Integretome analysis under combined drought–heat stress pinpointed carbohydrate, amino acid, and energy metabolism pathways as the crucial metabolic, proteomic, and transcriptional components in plant tolerance to combined stress. These examples illustrate the application of SCIPDb in identifying novel genes and pathways involved in combined stress tolerance. Further, we showed the application of this database in identifying novel candidate genes and pathways for combined drought and pathogen stress tolerance in Arabidopsis and chickpea. To our knowledge, SCIPDb is the only publicly available platform that provides extensive information and paves the way for advancing mechanistic understanding of plant responses to combined stresses.