Impact and mechanism of sulphur-deficiency on modern wheat farming nitrogen-related sustainability and gliadin content

Abstract

Two challenges that the global wheat industry is facing are a lowering nitrogen-use efficiency (NUE) and an increase in the reporting of wheat-protein related health issues. Sulphur deficiencies in soil has also been reported as a global issue. The current study used large-scale field and glasshouse experiments to investigate the sulphur fertilization impacts on sulphur deficient soil. Here we show that sulphur addition increased NUE by more than 20% through regulating glutamine synthetase. Alleviating the soil sulphur deficiency highly significantly reduced the amount of gliadin proteins indicating that soil sulphur levels may be related to the biosynthesis of proteins involved in wheat-induced human pathologies. The sulphur-dependent wheat gluten biosynthesis network was studied using transcriptome analysis and amino acid metabolomic pathway studies. The study concluded that sulphur deficiency in modern farming systems is not only having a profound negative impact on productivity but is also impacting on population health.

Zitong Yu et al. utilize large-scale field and glasshouse experiments and transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses to explore the impacts of sulphur fertilization on sulphur-deficient wheat crop and its gluten composition. They show that sulphur fertilization increases nitrogen-use efficiency through regulating glutamine synthetase and reduces the amount of gliadin components through mediating the aspartate-family amino acid biosynthesis network.