Growth and Physiological Responses of Quinoa to Drought and Temperature Stress

Abstract

Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.), traditionally called the mother of grains, has the potential to grow under high temperatures and drought, tolerating levels regarded as stresses in other crop species. A pot experiment was conducted in a climate chamber to investigate the potential of quinoa tolerance to increasing drought and temperature. Quinoa plants were subjected to three irrigation and two temperature regimes. At low temperature, the day/night climate chamber temperature was maintained at 18/8 °C and 25/20 °C for high temperature throughout the treatment period. The irrigation treatments were full irrigation (FI), deficit irrigation (DI) and alternate root‐zone drying (ARD). FI plants were irrigated daily to the level of the pot's water‐holding capacity. In DI and ARD, 70 % water of FI was applied either to the whole pot or to one side of the pot alternating, respectively. The results indicated that plant height and shoot dry weight significantly decreased by ARD and DI compared to FI treatment both at low and at high temperatures. However, plants in ARD treatment showed significantly higher plant height and shoot dry weight compared to DI especially at higher temperature, which is linked to increased xylem ion content. Higher quinoa plant growth in ARD was associated with increase in water‐use efficiency (WUEi) due to higher abscisic acid concentration and higher nutrient contents compared to DI. From results, it can be concluded that quinoa plant growth is favoured by high temperature (25/20 °C) and ARD is an effective irrigation strategy to increase WUE in drought prone areas.

Effect of high temperature on pollen morphology, plant growth and seed yield in quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.)

“…Heat‐tolerant plants have the ability to preserve high stomatal conductance at high temperature inducing transpirational heat dissipation (Kaushal et al., ). At high temperature (40/24°C), both quinoa genotypes exhibited high stomatal conductance (Figure b), similar to the results reported in “Titicaca” and “Achachino” quinoa cultivars (Becker et al., ; Yang et al., ) and a heat‐tolerant group of tomatoes (Zhou et al., ). Thus, quinoa plants under high temperature can still keep evaporative cooling during heat stress if there is sufficient water supply (Becker et al., ).…”

“…The rise in temperature from (18/8°C) to (25/20°C) increased the plant height by 100% in the quinoa cv. “Titicaca”(Yang et al., ). Those results are similar to our results, even though the temperature regime used in their study is not as high compared with the temperatures we used (40/24°C).…”

“…The same results were observed in the quinoa cv. “Titicaca,” where high temperature (25/20°C) increased A n by ~44% in relation to a control treatment (Yang et al., ). Heat stress (35/29°C) did not affect leaf photosynthetic rates in three quinoa cultivars “Cherry Vanilla,” “Red head” and “Salcedo” (Bunce, ).…”

“…Moreover, night temperatures between 20 and 22°C reduced grain yield between 23% and 31% when high temperatures occurred during the flowering stage (Lesjak & Calderini, ). However, experiments in controlled conditions showed that day/night temperatures of 25/20°C stimulated quinoa growth (Becker et al., ; Yang, Akhtar, Amjad, Iqbal, & Jacobsen, ).…”

CARACTERIZACIÓN DE LA DIVERSIDAD GENÉTICA DE UNA COLECCIÓN DE QUINUA (Chenopodium quinoa Willd)

“…También se le considera una especie con alta adaptabilidad agroecológica, como resultado de un largo proceso de domesticación, y una alta variabilidad genética. Es una especie que puede tolerar diferentes tipos de estrés como salinidad, frío, alta radiación solar, temperaturas de congelamiento nocturnas, así como tolerancia a factores fitosanitarios [1,5]. Debido a su potencial económico y a que representa un cultivo de seguridad alimentaria para las comunidades andinas, en la última década se ha incentivado su producción entre agricultores, empresas agroindustriales e instituciones [6].…”