Drought Induced Changes in Growth, Osmolyte Accumulation and Antioxidant Metabolism of Three Maize Hybrids

Abstract

Consequences of drought stress in crop production systems are perhaps more deleterious than other abiotic stresses under changing climatic scenarios. Regulations of physio-biochemical responses of plants under drought stress can be used as markers for drought stress tolerance in selection and breeding. The present study was conducted to appraise the performance of three different maize hybrids (Dong Dan 80, Wan Dan 13, and Run Nong 35) under well-watered, low, moderate and SD conditions maintained at 100, 80, 60, and 40% of field capacity, respectively. Compared with well-watered conditions, drought stress caused oxidative stress by excessive production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) which led to reduced growth and yield formation in all maize hybrids; nevertheless, negative effects of drought stress were more prominent in Run Nong 35. Drought-induced osmolyte accumulation and strong enzymatic and non-enzymatic defense systems prevented the severe damage in Dong Dan 80. Overall performance of all maize hybrids under drought stress was recorded as: Dong Dan 80 > Wan Dan 13 > Run Nong 35 with 6.39, 7.35, and 16.55% yield reductions. Consequently, these biochemical traits and differential physiological responses might be helpful to develop drought tolerance genotypes that can withstand water-deficit conditions with minimum yield losses.

UPLC‐HRMS‐based untargeted metabolic profiling reveals changes in chickpea (Cicer arietinum) metabolome following long‐term drought stress

“…It is worth noting that the percentage of decrease in dry weights was significantly higher for the sensitive variety. Earlier studies demonstrated significant reduction in shoot dry weights when grown under drought conditions in chickpea (Pang et al, ) and in corn (Anjum et al, ). Silvente, Sobolev, and Lara () attributed the decrease in dry weight under drought in the sensitive soybean variety to the depletion of sucrose in the leaves of this variety.…”

Morphological and biochemical responses of Balanites aegyptiaca to drought stress and recovery are provenance‐dependent

“…Plants respond to drought stress in different ways, including avoidance and tolerance mechanisms which enable a high plant developmental flexibility (Xu et al, 2010). Induced antioxidant defence and osmotic adjustment through accumulation of compatible solutes in living cells are protective mechanism to keep water balance, save cellular structure and retard dehydration under drought stress condition (Anjum et al, 2017;Chaves, Maroco, & Pereira, 2003;Taiz & Zeiger, 2006). Plants can develop defence mechanisms against free radical-induced oxidative stress through a number of enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidant defences (Pourghayoumi, Rahemi, Bakhshi, Aalami, & Kamgar-Haghighi, 2017).…”

Individual and concurrent effects of drought and chilling stresses on morpho-physiological characteristics and oxidative metabolism of maize cultivars

“…Guo et al (2006) reported that drought and chilling temperature increased the H 2 O 2 contents in different rice cultivars [20]. The MDA contents is an indicator of extent of lipid peroxidation under stress conditions [17,18,41]. The exposure of plants to unfavorable environmental conditions cause lipid peroxidation due to over-production of ROS [11,18].…”

“…The contents of SOD and POD decreased under drought, chilling and drought + chilling stress conditions (Figure 9a and c) which was consistent with over-production of ROS and poor growth of maize seedlings in these treatments. Recently, some reports proved that the extreme stress conditions could imbalance the active oxygen metabolism as well as SOD and POD activities [17,44,45]. Furthermore, Cao et al (2011) found that the SOD and POD activities were initially increased under drought and low temperature conditions and were decreased later with their prolonged exposure in oil palm [44].…”