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Drought resistance in rice seedlings conferred by seed priming

Role of the anti-oxidant defense mechanisms

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Abstract

Seed priming is a method by which seeds are subjected to different stress conditions to impart stress adaptation in seedlings germinating and growing under stressful situations. Drought stress is a major reason behind failure of crops. We studied the effects of hydropriming, dehydration priming (induced by PEG), and osmopriming (induced by NaCl and KH2PO4) on subsequent germination, growth and anti-oxidant defense mechanisms of 2-week-old rice seedlings under continuing dehydration stress. Unprimed seeds grown in PEG showed significantly lower germination and growth along with significantly higher reactive oxygen species (ROS) and lipid peroxidation levels. Among the priming methods, 5 % PEG priming was found to be the best in terms of germination and growth rate along with the lowest amount of ROS and lipid peroxidation (malondialdehyde [MDA]) values. MDA levels were reduced significantly by all of the priming methods. Hence, reduction of lipid peroxidation may be a key factor underlying the drought tolerance produced by the priming treatments. Glutathione peroxidase (GPX) activity seemed to bear an excellent correlation with oxidative stress resistance through seed priming. The PEG priming produced minimum peroxidative damage and superior germination and growth rate along with efficient GPX activity, overexpressed MnSOD and maintenance of HSP70 expression in normal as well as in drought condition. Therefore, in PEG-primed seeds the existence of robust protective mechanisms is definitely indicated.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to Professor Bikas K. Chakrabarti, Centre for Applied Mathematics and Computational Science, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, India, for his generous encouragement. They acknowledge Dr. Bijan Adhikari from the Chinsura Rice Research Centre, Hoogly, India, for his cooperation and for providing rice seeds. The authors thank Ms. Riddhi Mahansaria for her help with the morphological measurements.

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Correspondence to Sanghamitra Raha.

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Goswami, A., Banerjee, R. & Raha, S. Drought resistance in rice seedlings conferred by seed priming. Protoplasma 250, 1115–1129 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00709-013-0487-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00709-013-0487-x

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