Metabolic Signatures Associated with Drought Response, Shoot Architecture and Flowering Time in Camelina

Camelina sativa is an ancient oilseed crop of European origin, characterized by high environmental adaptability, low input requirements and tolerance to multiple stresses.
It is a promising candidate for use in intercropping and mixed-cropping systems, as part of the agroecological transition. Selecting shorter-cycle varieties could further enhance its suitability for these systems. However, this strategy should not compromise plant resilience to stress, nor alter its metabolic profiles or plasticity. Researchers assessed the impact of flowering time on drought-stress responses and seed quality in six gene-edited camelina mutants. Their phenotypes were characterized under early- and late-season drought conditions.

The study focused on different lines carrying combined mutations in five genes (SVP, TFL1, LHP1, ELF3 and FLC), conferring traits suited to these novel uses, including early flowering, determinate flowering and a bushier growth habit. The results showed that early flowering was not strongly affected by severe water stress, unlike branching and seed yield. The seed lipidomic profile remained stable. By contrast, the specialised metabolite plasticity was strongly modulated by drought across all genotypes, as revealed by untargeted metabolomics. The specialised metabolic profiles of mutant seeds displayed distinct drought-response patterns, with bushy mutants showing a constitutive stress response under control conditions, including differences in antioxidant content. Nevertheless, the metabolic variability induced by editing flowering repressors was much lower than that observed within the existing diversity of the species. Metabolite profiling of leaves also revealed mutant-specific metabolic signatures, but with lower metabolic diversity than in seeds.

This study demonstrates that environmental conditions, and particularly water stress, can affect the stability of some selected phenotypes, while others remain stable. These gene-edited lines will now need to be evaluated under agronomic conditions representative of agroecological systems, such as summer cover crops and mixed cropping with legumes, and compared with commercial varieties or recombinant lines maximising the species' natural diversity.
If phenotypic evaluation proves positive and the European regulatory framework evolves favourably, these genetic lines could provide a highly valuable resource for promoting crop diversification in oilseed production and integrating cover crops into crop rotations.


Research developed at the Institute Jean-Pierre Bourgin for Plant Sciences in collaboration.