Putrescine Increases Floral Retention, Pod Set and Seed Yield in Cold Stressed Chickpea

Abstract

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is sensitive to cold stress (<8°C) at its reproductive phase that results in flower abortion, poor pod set and thus reduced yield. Early maturing genotypes are especially more sensitive. In this crop, the metabolic causes underlying cold injury that are imperative to induce cold tolerance are not known. In the present study, the endogenous levels of putrescine (diamine), spermidine (triamine) and spermine (tetramine) were examined in early maturing chickpea genotype ICCV 96029, subjected to chilling temperatures of field (12-15/ 4-6°C; average maximum and minimum temperature respectively), at flowering or early podding stage. These were compared with controls growing in warmer conditions (28/12°C) of the glasshouse. The polyamine levels increased six to nine times because of stress. Relatively, putrescine (PUT) elevation was the highest but short-lived and its decrease appeared to match with the onset of flower and pod abscission in stressed plants. Compared with controls, chilling injury, observed as electrolyte leakage (EL), increased by 60 % while cellular respiration declined by 68 % in stressed plants. Exogenous application of 10 mm PUT to stressed plants reduced the EL by 29 % and elevated the cellular respiration by 40 %. PUT application at flowering stage resulted in increase of 30, 31, 23 and 25 % in floral retention, pod set, pod retention and fertile pods respectively. At the early podding stage, PUT treatment increased the seed yield per plant, seed number per 100 pods and individual seed weight by 50, 17 and 19 % respectively. The number of single-seeded pods per plant increased from 4.4 in stressed plants to 12.2 in PUT-treated plants while the number of double-seeded pods reduced from 6.2 to 4.3. The number of infertile pods declined from 8.2 in stressed plants to 3.1 in PUTtreated plants.

Nitric oxide induced by polyamines involves antioxidant systems against chilling stress in tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) seedling

“…PAs exert influence in the plant life cycle, including cell division and elongation, morphogenesis, seed germination, flowering, and senescence (Igarashi and Kashiwagi, 2000;Bais and Ravishankar, 2002;Yoda et al, 2006;Wimalasekera et al, 2011;Gupta et al, 2013). Furthermore, PAs also have impact on plants in response to diverse abiotic stresses, such as salinity (Zapata et al, 2004;Shu et al, 2012), drought (Yang et al, 2007;Li et al, 2015), oxidative stress (Rider et al, 2007;Puyang et al, 2015), high temperature Mostofa et al, 2014), and chilling stress (Nayyar, 2005;Yamamoto et al, 2012). It was previously suggested that the elevated stress tolerance of plants due to PAs may be attributed to their polycationic nature at physiologic pH.…”

Effects of Salt Stress after Late Booting Stage on Yield and Antioxidant Capacity in Pigmented Rice Grains and Alleviation of the Salt-Induced Yield Reduction by Exogenous Spermidine

“…During vegetative growth PAs have been shown to reduce the accumulation of Na + , alleviate the loss of K + , reduce ROS accumulation and enhance the activity of antioxidative enzymes and non-enzymatic antioxidants, alleviate chlorophyll loss and membrane leakage, and increase compatible osmolytes (Chattopadhayay et al, 2002;Roy et al, 2005;Ndayiragije and Lutts, 2006;Quinet et al, 2010;Roychoudhury et al, 2011;Saleethong et al, 2011). Exogenous application of PAs has also been reported to promote reproductive development and offers protection to reproductive structures leading to yield improvement under cold stress in chickpeas (Nayyar, 2005) and salt stress in rice (Ndayiragije and Lutts, 2007;Saleethong et al, 2013). However, the effects of exogenous PAs on the nutritional quality of harvested seeds were not addressed in previous studies.…”

Alleviating harmful effects of chilling stress on rice seedling via application of spermidine as seed priming factor

“…As putrescine accumulation reduced the chilling injury in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) (Kim et al, 2002), chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) (Nayyar, 2005) and maize (Cao et al, 2008) under chilling stress. Many studies demonstrated that genetic modification of the polyamine biosynthetic pathway is a useful tool to recognize the function of polyamines in plant responses to abiotic stresses in both crops and model plants (Igarashi and Kashiwagi, 2000;Childs et al, 2003;Kusano et al, 2008).…”