Grain-Priming with L-Arginine Improves the Growth Performance of Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Plants under Drought Stress

Abstract

Drought is the main limiting abiotic environmental stress worldwide. Water scarcity restricts the growth, development, and productivity of crops. Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is a fundamentally cultivated cereal crop. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of grain-priming with arginine (0.25, 0.5, and 1 mM) on growth performance and some physiological aspects of wheat plants under normal or drought-stressed conditions. Morphological growth parameters, photosynthetic pigments, soluble sugars, free amino acids, proline, total phenols, flavonoids, and proteins profiles were determined. Drought stress lowered plant growth parameters and chlorophyll a and b contents while increasing carotenoids, soluble sugars, free amino acids, proline, total phenols, and flavonoids. Soaking wheat grains with arginine (0.25, 0.5, and 1 mM) improves plant growth and mitigates the harmful effects of drought stress. The most effective treatment to alleviate the effects of drought stress on wheat plants was (1 mM) arginine, that increased root length (48.3%), leaves number (136%), shoot fresh weight (110.5%), root fresh weight (110.8%), root dry weight (107.7%), chlorophyll a (11.4%), chlorophyll b (38.7%), and carotenoids content (41.9%) compared to the corresponding control values. Arginine enhanced the synthesis of soluble sugars, proline, free amino acids, phenols, and flavonoids in wheat plants under normal or stressed conditions. Furthermore, the protein profile varies in response to drought stress and arginine pretreatments. Ultimately, pretreatment with arginine had a powerful potential to face the impacts of drought stress on wheat plants by promoting physiological and metabolic aspects.

Biocontrol of early blight disease of eggplant using endophytic Aspergillus terreus: improving plant immunological, physiological and antifungal activities

“…Phenolic compounds play a protective role in plants exposed to either abiotic or biotic stress (Adhikari et al 2017 ; Hussein et al 2022 ; Matta 1969 ; Osman et al 2021 ). Accumulation of these compounds in infected plants by fungal pathogens has been recorded in several studies (El-Khallal 2007 ; Ramamoorthy et al 2002 ).…”

Association Analysis for Some Biochemical Traits in Wild Relatives of Wheat under Drought Stress Conditions

“…Drought or water-deficit stress is one of the main consequences arising from changes in climate. Thus, screening wheat germplasm in different growth and development stages is an important task for improving its drought tolerance in future breeding programs [ 49 ]. Therefore, we assessed the responses of a core collection of bread wheat genotypes and wild relatives possessing the D genome to drought stress at the early stage of growth in terms of dry matter and four antioxidant enzymes.…”

Cysteine mitigates the effect of NaCl salt toxicity in flax (Linum usitatissimum L) plants by modulating antioxidant systems

“…The higher values of amino-N in salt-stressed plants treated with L-cysteine treatments may be related to the changes in protein metabolism and up-regulating K + transportation to alleviate plants damaged by stress 29 – 31 . Similarly, it was reported that exogenous application of L- arginine, and L-ornithine had a powerful potential to face the impacts of abiotic stresses on wheat 32 and sugar beet 6 plants by promoting the synthesis of amino acids, protein, and antioxidant systems.…”