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Exogenous Melatonin Regulates the Expression Pattern of Antioxidant-Responsive Genes, Antioxidant Enzyme Activities, and Physio-chemical Traits in Pearl Millet Under Drought Stress

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Abstract

Drought stress negatively influences agricultural land and production worldwide. Therefore, it is crucial to reduce the deleterious impacts of drought on cereal crops. However, the potential of melatonin in the mitigation of drought stress is not clearly understood especially in crop plants. The present study investigates the impact of different methods (seed priming and foliar) and concentrations (0, 40, 80, 120, and 160 µM) of melatonin on pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum L. R. Br.) under drought stress. Impact of melatonin was determined by examining the growth, photosynthesis, osmolyte production, oxidative damage, antioxidant enzyme activities, and expression pattern of antioxidant-responsive genes under drought. The exogenous melatonin at different concentrations differentially improved the growth, physiological, and biochemical traits of pearl millet under drought stress. In both treated methods, melatonin positively regulated the expression pattern of antioxidant-responsive genes that are involved in drought tolerance. Moreover, melatonin improved the proline content and reduced oxidative damage by decreasing hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and malondialdehyde (MDA) content. Moreover, a significant improvement in the activities of antioxidants such as catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD), glutathione peroxidase (GPX), and glutathione reductase (GR) was noted in pearl millet under drought on exposure to melatonin. The seed priming at 120 µM and foliar at 160 µM was found very effective for pearl millet growth under drought. Overall, the present study suggested that seed treatment and foliar treatment of melatonin differentially mitigated the drought stress in pearl millet.

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Data Availability

All the data of presented study have been given in the main body of this manuscript. No supplementary data files are available separately.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Modern Agro-industry Technology Research System (CARS-34) and the Sichuan Province Breeding Research grant (2016NYZ0036), Modern Agricultural Industry System Sichuan Forage Innovation Team (SCCXTD-2020-16).

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  1. Samrah Afzal Awan and Imran Khan have contribute equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Grassland Science & Technology, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, 611130, China

    Samrah Afzal Awan, Imran Khan, Xiaosan Wang, Xinquan Zhang & Linkai Huang

  2. College of Agronomy, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, 611130, China

    Samrah Afzal Awan

  3. Department of Environmental Sciences, Government College University Faisalabad, Faisalabad, 38000, Pakistan

    Muhammad Rizwan

  4. Department of Plant Physiology, Faculty of Agrobiology and Food Resources, Slovak University of Agriculture, Nitra, Slovakia

    Marian Brestic

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SAA and HL designed this project. SAA and IK participated in experimental processing and collecting material. HL supervised the project. SAA, IK, and MR wrote the original manuscript. SAA, XQ, and XW revised and edited the final version of manuscript. LH, MB, and XZ contributed to review and edit the manuscript.

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Awan, S.A., Khan, I., Rizwan, M. et al. Exogenous Melatonin Regulates the Expression Pattern of Antioxidant-Responsive Genes, Antioxidant Enzyme Activities, and Physio-chemical Traits in Pearl Millet Under Drought Stress. J Plant Growth Regul 43, 1061–1075 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00344-023-11159-w

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