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Stay-green trait serves as yield stability attribute under combined heat and drought stress in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

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Abstract

The present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of a stay-green trait to stabilize the yield responses under combined heat and drought stress on wheat. Ten Recombinant Inbred Lines (RILs) of wheat along with their parents (HI1500/DBW 43) were evaluated under timely sown with irrigation (control) and without irrigation (drought stress), and late sown with irrigation (heat stress) and without irrigation (combined heat and drought stress). We observed that combined stress of drought and heat stress was more detrimental than the individual stresses for plants. GCP 6 and GCP 33 RILs showed 50.08% and 49.52% while GCP 23 and GCP 30 showed 61.05% and 62.17% decrease in yield under combined stress as compared to the control condition. We found that GCP 6 and GCP 33 RILs stabilized their yield by maintaining stay-green traits such as retaining a higher amount of chlorophyll, photosynthesis rate and leaf area duration at the anthesis stage under combined stress as compared to other RILs. Further, Real-Time gene expression data inferred that GCP 6 and GCP 33 RILs maintained stay-green traits by up-regulating TaCHLD as well as down-regulating TaPaO, TaPPH and TaSGR1 genes at anthesis stage under combined stress, that are known chlorophyll biosynthesis (TaCHLD) and degradation genes respectively. It was also revealed that GCP 6 and GCP 33 RILs maintained higher photosynthesis rate during the anthesis stage under combined stress due to increased carbon fixation resulting from higher TaRbcs, PsbP and TaPsbA genes expression. This study showed that stay-green traits help in stabilizing the yield attributes under combined heat and drought stress in wheat.

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Acknowledgements

Authors wish to convey sincere thanks to ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, India for financial support. The RILs mentioned in the study were developed by Dr. Harikrishna, Scientist, Division of Genetics, IARI, New Delhi, India. The able assistance provided by Dr. Rajbir Yadav and Dr. Omo Tayo for the execution of experiments are thankfully acknowledged.

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  1. Rajeev Kumar

    Present address: Division of Vegetable Production, ICAR-Indian Institute of Vegetable Research, Varanasi, 221305, India

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Plant Physiology, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, 110012, India

    Rajeev Kumar, Dipankar Barman, Om P. Ghimire, Viswanathan Chinnusamy & Ajay Arora

  2. Division of Genetics, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, 110012, India

    Harikrishna & Pradeep K. Singh

  3. School of Water Stress Management, ICAR-National Institute of Abiotic Stress Management, Baramati, 413115, India

    S. Gurumurthy

  4. ICAR-National Institute for Plant Biotechnology, New Delhi, 110012, India

    Jasdeep C. Padaria

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Contributions

AA, CV, PKS and JCP designed the experiment. RK performed the experiment and wrote the manuscript, whereas HK developed the RILs. AA, DB, OPG and SG contributed to data analysis and editing of the whole manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ajay Arora.

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Kumar, R., Harikrishna, Barman, D. et al. Stay-green trait serves as yield stability attribute under combined heat and drought stress in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Plant Growth Regul 96, 67–78 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10725-021-00758-w

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