Drought-induced changes in photosynthetic electron transport in maize probed by prompt fluorescence, delayed fluorescence, P700 and cyclic electron flow signals

Response of Photosynthetic Performance to Drought Duration and Re-Watering in Maize

“…Y(NO) increased significantly after 10 days of drought, and the increase of Y(NO) became greater with the increase of drought duration. The decrease of Y(NPQ) in 15 days of drought and the increase of Y(NO) suggested that long-term drought led to the damage of the xanthophyll cycle-related active energy dissipation, and the passive energy dissipation was induced [11]. Under the same drought duration, compared with D340, D1798Z had higher Y(II) and Y(NPQ), and lower Y(NO).…”

“…Under drought, plants reduce the water vapor loss through reducing the stomatal opening [8]. However, it also restricts CO 2 entry in the leaf, which may lead to the decrease of the photosynthesis rate [9] and a decrease in primary photochemical processes [10], which will inhibit plant growth and even reduce dry matter accumulation and yield [11]. Therefore, the measurement of photosynthetic performance is considered a standard technique for studies on drought stress, especially, the photosynthesis rate (A), stomata conductance (gs), and transpiration (E) have been determined to be the most used techniques to discriminate the plant responses to drought [12][13][14].…”

“…The effects of drought on maize have been extensively investigated. In general, drought was shown to induce the decrease of photosynthesis in maize leaves, and this decrease was caused by stomatal closure and the decrease of the maximum quantum efficiency of photosystem II [11,14,22,23]. Drought might also lead to a reduction in total biomass and fraction of crop dry matter allocated to the grain [24].…”

“…Different gene types of maize have different susceptibility to drought. Compared with the drought-sensitive genotype, the drought-resistant genotype had higher endogenous brassinosteroids content [25] and showed a reduced extent of drought-induced changes in the photosynthetic electron transport chain, and its cyclic electron flow pathway operated for a longer time during drought stress [11]. It is important to have higher drought resistance during drought periods, but drought stress in plants is usually transient, and the capacity to recover from drought is also very important.…”

Special issue in honour of Prof. Reto J. Strasser - Thylakoid membrane reorganization, induced by growth light intensity, affects the plants susceptibility to drought stress

“…It is expected that global be applied for phenotyping of plants experiencing water deficit (Oukarroum et al 2007, Strasser et al 2010, Goltsev et al 2012, Kalaji et al 2016. Stomatal closure, which modulates water loss due to transpiration at the expense of lowering of the CO2 supply needed for the Calvin cycle (Benešová et al 2012, Tombesi et al 2015, Martin-StPaul et al 2017, leads to hampered NADP + regeneration and eventually to overreduction of photosynthetic electron transport chain and production of reactive oxygen species (Wang et al 2018, Zhou et al 2019. Furthermore, cytoplasm shrinkage upon water deficiency brings about increase in molecular crowding which compromises protein stability, provokes protein aggregation (Hall 2006, Furuki et al 2012, Kuznetsova et al 2014, Sarkar and Pielak 2014, alters the physical properties of the lipid bilayers, and promotes membrane fusion (reviewed in Crowe et al 2011, Morandi et al 2018.…”