Seed treatment with glycine betaine enhances tolerance of cotton to chilling stress

Abstract

Chilling injury is an important natural stress that can threaten cotton production, especially at the sowing and seedling stages in early spring. It is therefore important for cotton production to improve chilling tolerance at these stages. The current work examines the potential for glycine betaine (GB) treatment of seeds to increase the chilling tolerance of cotton at the seedling stage. Germination under cold stress was increased significantly by GB treatment. Under low temperature, the leaves of seedlings from treated seeds exhibited a higher net photosynthetic rate (PN), higher antioxidant enzyme activity including superoxide dismutase, ascorbate peroxidase and catalase, lower hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) content and less damage to the cell membrane. Enzyme activity was correlated negatively with H2O2 content and degree of damage to the cell membrane but correlated positively with GB content. The experimental results suggested that although GB was only used to treat cotton seed, the beneficial effect caused by the preliminary treatment of GB could play a significant role during germination that persisted to at least the four-leaf seedling stage. Therefore, it is crucial that this method is employed in agricultural production to improve chilling resistance in the seedling stage by soaking the seeds in GB.

Targeting Glycinebetaine for Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Crop Plants: Physiological Mechanism, Molecular Interaction and Signaling

“…[8,37,38]. It is involved in the protection of many plant species against a range of oxidative stress under stressful conditions, such as, salinity [39][40][41][42], drought [43][44][45][46], metal/metalloid stress [47][48][49], high temperature [45,50] and chilling [23,51,52]. A lot of research findings confirmed the positive relationship between accumulation of GB and plant stress tolerance.…”

“…Pretreatment by GB improved the K + and Ca +2 nutrition, increased free Pro and GB content and levels of soluble sugars, which finally developed chilling stress (15 o C for 2 d) tolerance in sugarcane. Recently, Cheng et al [23] demonstrated that exogenous GB treatment of seeds increases the chilling tolerance of cotton at the seedling stage. Moreover, GB decreases the membrane damage and improves the antioxidant defense system in the cotton plant.…”

“…However, the presence of GB at 5 mM concentration in the incubation medium significantly reduced this efflux of K + ions. Furthermore, in tomato plants, exogenously applied GB significantly reduced the chilling-induced production of H2O2 [22], and reduce cell membrane damage in cotton [23]. Although GB does not scavenge ROS directly, it mitigates the damaging effects of oxidative stress by other means, for example by activating or stabilizing ROS-scavenging enzymes and/or repressing the production of ROS by other mechanisms.…”

Glycine Betaine Accumulation, Significance and Interests for Heavy Metal Tolerance in Plants

“…Compatible solutes including polyamines, proline, GB, and soluble sugar accumulation in plants are positively correlated with low temperature stress tolerance [ 171 , 172 ] and extreme temperature [ 64 , 173 ] in plants. Glycine betaine enhanced the growth of potato [ 174 ], maize [ 175 ], chickpea ( Cicer arietinum L.) [ 176 ], and cotton [ 177 ] under chilling stress conditions. Cooling (<10 ℃) is particularly harmful to the development of chickpea, especially during the reproductive stage.…”

“…On the other hand, during pod filling, GB treatment resulted in an increase in the number of seeds and its yield, seed weight and pods were significantly improved after treatment. Glycine betaine greatly induced cold stress tolerance in plants through effective improvement in overall leaf water, sucrose and chlorophyll content, meanwhile, it also reduced the ROS and contents of abscisic acid as well [ 177 ]. Some plant species such as barley ( Hordeum vulgare L.) [ 179 ] and spinach [ 180 ] synthesize more GB in different compartments of chloroplasts than plants like rockcress ( Arabidopsis ) [ 181 ] and tobacco [ 182 ].…”