Patent ID: 7855164

Claim:
A method of screening for a compound that enhances stress tolerance in plants, the method comprising contacting a candidate compound with a plant cell comprising a promoter operably linked to a reporter molecule, wherein the promoter comprises a minimum G28/G1792-responsive promoter region that (i) has at least 90% identity to SEQ ID NO:3 as determined with a BLASTN algorithm using as defaults a wordlength (W) of 11, an expectation (E) of 10, M=5, N=−4 and a comparison of both strands, and (ii) comprises the nucleotide sequence of the GCC boxes (GGCGGCT) set forth in SEQ ID NO:3; detecting the level of expression of the reporter molecule, and selecting the compound that increases expression, thereby screening for a compound that enhances stress tolerance in plants.