Multi-tissue proteome atlas reveals constitutive and reactive cold responses in wild and domesticated chickpea

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Low temperatures during reproductive development reduce pod set and yield in chickpea, yet the tissue-specific proteome changes leading to yield loss remain largely unresolved. We quantified plant and seed phenotypic traits and generated tissue-resolved proteomes for leaf, flower, and seed from two domesticated cultivars and one wild relative grown under three controlled temperature regimes. Genotype, rather than temperature, was the primary driver of proteome variation in all three tissues, and the wild-domesticated separation persisted across temperature regimes. Wild and domesticated genotypes showed distinct cold-response signatures with no overlapping functional terms. Cold-responsive enzyme inhibitors were enriched in leaf and flower; genotype-specific fructosidase/invertase changes pointed to altered source-tissue sucrose metabolism under cold conditions. Under high day temperature conditions, seed storage protein composition was 11S-dominant in the wild accession and 7S-dominant in both domesticated cultivars. The lowest day temperature partially reversed this balance in PBA Striker through 11S induction. These findings indicate that the proteome separation between wild and domesticated backgrounds is constitutive rather than cold-induced in the genotypes examined.