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Silicon-Induced Modulation of Photosynthetic Pigments, Osmolytes, and Phytohormonal Regulation Boosted the Drought Tolerance in Elymus sibiricus L

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Abstract

Plants face various environmental stresses during their life cycle that are crucial in defining plant stress responses. Among them, drought majorly affects the growth, physiological mechanisms, and yield of crops. Therefore, the present study investigated potential role of silicon (Si) in reducing the impacts of drought in Elymus sibiricus (L.). The Si was applied as seed priming at 50, 100, 150, and 200 mg L−1 under well-watered (normal) and drought-stressed (45% water-holding capacity) conditions. Drought stress decreased the Chl a by 61.6%, Chl b by 59.4%, total Chl by 60.9%, and RWC by 51.1% and caused oxidative damage by increasing electrolyte leakage by 595.4%, malondialdehyde content by 259.2%, and hydrogen peroxide by 200.4% over the well-watered (CK) condition. However, Si positively affected the growth and other traits under normal and drought conditions. The Si at 150 and 200 mg L−1 enhanced the total soluble proteins by 97.6 and 120%, soluble sugar by 193 and 245.9%, proline by 212.7 and 273.8%, SOD by 40.5 and 48.9%, CAT by 150.6 and 127.1%, POD by 87.5 and 121.6%, and APX by 183 and 210.7% over the (CK) under drought-stressed condition, respectively. Furthermore, 200 mg L−1 Si significantly increased the IAA, GA, CTK, and BR and decreased the ABA under drought conditions. Thus, Si at higher levels improved the tolerance of the Elymus plant against drought. Overall, the present study suggests the Si-mediated amelioration of drought stress in Elymus that could be used to enhance drought tolerance in other forages and crop plants.

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

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the Leading Scientist Project of Qinghai Province (2023-NK-147), the earmarked fund for CARS (CARS-34), Gansu Provincial Science and Technology Major Projects (22ZD6NA007), the Foreign Youth Talent Project (QN2022175009L), and the Fundamental Research Fund for the Central Universities (lzujbky-2021-ct21) for providing funds for this work.

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  1. Imran Khan and Samrah Afzal Awan are contributed equally to this study.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Herbage Improvement and Grassland Agro-Ecosystems, College of Pastoral Agricultural Science and Technology, Key Laboratory of Grassland Livestock Industry Innovation, Ministry of Agriculture, College of Pastoral Agriculture Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730020, China

    Imran Khan, Huizhi Wang & Wengang Xie

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

    Samrah Afzal Awan

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

    Muhammad Rizwan

  4. College of Coastal Agricultural Sciences, Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang, 524008, China

    Aaqil Khan

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

    Marian Brestic

  6. Institute of Crop Science, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Laboratory of Spectroscopy Sensing, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Zaid Ulhassan

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Contributions

IK and WX designed this project. IK, HW, and SAA contributed to experimental processing, data collection, and curation. WX supervised the project. IK and SAA contributed to writing the original draft of the manuscript. MR, MB, AK, and ZU participated in revising the manuscript. WX contributed to the review and edited the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Wengang Xie.

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Khan, I., Awan, S.A., Rizwan, M. et al. Silicon-Induced Modulation of Photosynthetic Pigments, Osmolytes, and Phytohormonal Regulation Boosted the Drought Tolerance in Elymus sibiricus L. J Plant Growth Regul 43, 998–1011 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00344-023-11155-0

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