The objective of this study was to answer the question of how the deacclimation process affects frost tolerance, photosynthetic efficiency, brassinosteroid (BR) homeostasis and BRI1 expression of winter oilseed rape. A comparative study was conducted on cultivars with different agronomic and physiological traits. The deacclimation process can occur when there are periods of higher temperatures, particularly in the late autumn or winter. This interrupts the process of the acclimation (hardening) of winter crops to low temperatures, thus reducing their frost tolerance and becoming a serious problem for agriculture. The experimental model included plants that were non-acclimated, cold acclimated (at 4 °C) and deacclimated (at 16 °C/9 °C, one week). We found that deacclimation tolerance (maintaining a high frost tolerance despite warm deacclimating periods) was a cultivar-dependent trait. Some of the cultivars developed a high frost tolerance after cold acclimation and maintained it after deacclimation. However, there were also cultivars that had a high frost tolerance after cold acclimation but lost some of it after deacclimation (the cultivars that were more susceptible to deacclimation). Deacclimation reversed the changes in the photosystem efficiency that had been induced by cold acclimation, and therefore, measuring the different signals associated with photosynthetic efficiency (based on prompt and delayed chlorophyll fluorescence) of plants could be a sensitive tool for monitoring the deacclimation process (and possible changes in frost tolerance) in oilseed rape. Higher levels of BR were characteristic of the better frost-tolerant cultivars in both the cold-acclimated and deacclimated plants. The relative expression of the BRI1 transcript (encoding the BR-receptor protein) was lower after cold acclimation and remained low in the more frost-tolerant cultivars after deacclimation. The role of brassinosteroids in oilseed rape acclimation/deacclimation is briefly discussed.

Department of Plant Physiology Faculty of Agriculture and Economics University of Agriculture in Kraków Podłużna 3 30 239 Kraków Poland

Department of Plant Physiology Institute of Biology Warsaw University of Life Sciences SGGW 02 766 Warsaw Poland

Institute of Environmental Engineering Warsaw University of Life Sciences SGGW 02 766 Warsaw Poland

Institute of Technology and Life Sciences National Research Institute Falenty Al Hrabska 3 05 090 Raszyn Poland

Laboratory of Growth Regulators Faculty of Science Institute of Experimental Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences Palacký University Šlechtitelu 27 CZ 78371 Olomouc Czech Republic

The Franciszek Górski Institute of Plant Physiology Polish Academy of Sciences Niezapominajek 21 30 239 Kraków Poland

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Relationship between photosynthetic performance and yield loss in winter oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.) under frost conditions

Cold Acclimation and Deacclimation of Winter Oilseed Rape, with Special Attention Being Paid to the Role of Brassinosteroids