Common Ethanol Improves Plants’ Freezing Stress Tolerance

June 4, 2026

Arabidopsis and sugar beet show improvement; hopes for a solution to freezing damage

A joint research group led by RIKEN CSRS discovered that administering ethanol, which we commonly use, enhances tolerance to freezing stress, which causes cold-induced damage to plants, in a model plant Arabidopsis and the practical crop sugar beet.

In this study, the researchers administered inexpensive, readily available ethanol to seedlings of Arabidopsis and sugar beet, and exposed them to temperatures below 0°C. They found that ethanol administration improves seedling survival ratios after the exposure to freezing stress. The transcriptome analysis in Arabidopsis reveals that ethanol administration increases expression of the genes involved in   hypoxic responses, reactive oxygen species responses, environmental stress tolerance, and anthocyanin biosynthesis, suggesting that the genes function in the increased tolerance to freezing stress.

The findings of this study are expected to contribute to the development of technologies to enhance crops’ tolerance to low-temperature stress.

 

Original article

Plant Molecular Biology　doi: 10.1007/s11103-026-01719-5

D. Todaka, K. Nakaminami, A. Matsui, S. Ikeda, D. T. N. Quynh, M. Tanaka, S. Takahashi, C. Torii, J. Ishida, T. Takeda, A. J. Nagano, M. Seki,

"Ethanol application enhances freezing stress tolerance in Arabidopsis and sugar beet".

Contact

Motoaki Seki; Team Director
Daisuke Todaka; Research Scientist
Plant Genomic Network Research Team