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Assessment of biochemical and physiological parameters of durum wheat genotypes at the seedling stage during polyethylene glycol-induced water stress

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Abstract

Wild and landrace progenitors of wheat are an important source of resistance to various types of environmental stress, which can be explored in wheat breeding. With the aim of providing genetic materials for breeding to generate drought-resistant varieties, 50 durum wheat landraces, breeding lines and local cultivars were evaluated at the seedling stage for biomass, physiological parameters (e.g. photosynthetic pigment and relative water contents) and activities of key enzymatic antioxidants [e.g. ascorbate peroxidase (APX), catalase (CAT), peroxidase (POD) and superoxide dismutase (SOD)] under optimal and polyethylene glycol (PEG)-triggered water stress. We observed significant differences in the measured parameters among the durum wheat genotypes in response to PEG-induced water stress. Biomass and physiological traits showed a decreasing trend, whereas the antioxidant enzyme activities displayed an increasing trend in the investigated durum wheats under PEG-induced water stress. PEG-induced water stress decreased the average means of total soluble protein, chlorophyll a and total chlorophyll contents of the 50 investigated genotypes by 51.42, 36.77 and 26.15%, respectively, while the mean values of POD and SOD activities increased by 173.33 and 92.26%, respectively, relative to the control. A principal component analysis (PCA)-based biplot demonstrated that the stress tolerance index (STI) positively correlated with the root and shoot dry weights as well as CAT, SOD and APX activities. In conclusion, several breeding lines (e.g. G10, G19 and G20), Iranian landraces (e.g. G42 and G47) and local cultivar (G49) showed a better adaptive response to PEG-induced water stress than other tested genotypes, suggesting that these genotypes could be explored in various breeding programs to create new wheat cultivars with beneficial water stress-adaptive traits.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Dr. Reza Mohammadi of the Dryland Agricultural Research Institute (DARI), AREEO, Iran, who provided the plant materials for this study.

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  1. Alireza Pour-Aboughadareh and Mostafa Abdelrahman contributed equally to this study

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Seed and Plant Improvement Institute, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Karaj, 5782-5327, Iran

    Alireza Pour-Aboughadareh

  2. Kermanshah Branch, Department of Plant Breeding, Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah, Iran

    Alireza Etminan

  3. Botany Department, Faculty of Science, Aswan University, Aswan, 81528, Egypt

    Mostafa Abdelrahman

  4. Arid Land Research Center, Tottori University, Tottori, 680-0001, Japan

    Mostafa Abdelrahman

  5. The UWA Institute of Agriculture, The University of Western Australia, LB 5005, Perth, WA, 6001, Australia

    Kadambot H. M. Siddique

  6. Institute of Research and Development, Duy Tan University, 03 Quang Trung, Da Nang, Vietnam

    Lam-Son Phan Tran

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  1. Alireza Pour-Aboughadareh
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Contributions

AP and AE conceived and designed the experiment. AP and AE carried out the experiment. AP and MA performed the analysis with input from L-SPT. MA, AP and L-SPT wrote the manuscript. KHMS provided comments and edits. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Alireza Pour-Aboughadareh or Lam-Son Phan Tran.

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Pour-Aboughadareh, A., Etminan, A., Abdelrahman, M. et al. Assessment of biochemical and physiological parameters of durum wheat genotypes at the seedling stage during polyethylene glycol-induced water stress. Plant Growth Regul 92, 81–93 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10725-020-00621-4

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