A mild water deficit triggers drought escape (DE), and earlier flowering enables the plant to complete its life cycle before the stress becomes too severe (Vicentini et al., 2023). The ABA-dependent pathway is important for the stimulation of DE in rice. In DE, ABA levels increase and induce the expression of bZIP23, which acts as a positive regulator of the DE response. bZIP23 feeds back on the regulation of flowering-time genes, inducing transcription of OsTOC1, Ehd1, Hd3a, and RFT1 and reducing that of Ghd7 (Du et al., 2018).
