Green Revolution-associated DELLA accumulation enhances salt tolerance in cereals by disrupting INDETERMINATE SPIKELET1 biomolecular condensates.

Abstract

The semi-dwarf cereal varieties bred during the Green Revolution revolutionized global agriculture under optimal growing conditions, but their performance in stressful environments-, particularly under soil salinity, has remained an unresolved paradox. Here, we show that Green Revolution varieties (GRVs) of rice and wheat exhibit significantly enhanced salt tolerance compared with their pre-Green Revolution cultivated counterparts (non-GRVs), mediated by stress-induced accumulation of DELLA proteins. Through integrated metabolomic and transcriptomic analyses, we demonstrate that DELLAs maintain "growth-stress" balance by rewiring sugar-amino acid metabolic networks. At the molecular level, DELLAs antagonize INDETERMINATE SPIKELET1 (IDS1), a growth-promoting transcription factor that impairs salt tolerance through biomolecular condensation. Structural and functional analyses demonstrate that DELLAs physically dissolve IDS1 condensates, thereby reprogramming transcriptional networks. Remarkably, expression of a dominant-negative OsIDS1 variant (OsIDS1^EARm), which attenuates condensation and transcriptional repression, confers both semi-dwarf architecture and enhanced salt tolerance in non-GRVs, outperforming conventional Green Revolution alleles by producing a 35% yield gain (∼170 kg ha⁻¹) in saline fields. Collectively, our work resolves the mechanistic basis of stress adaptation in semi-dwarf crops and establishes a novel paradigm for the development of stress-resilient crops through targeted manipulation of transcriptional condensates.