Exogenously applied ABA modulated enzymatic changes conferring drought tolerance in rice varieties
摘要
The most devastating abiotic stress on plant growth and development is drought. Abscisic acid plays a critical role in the physiological, biochemical, and molecular changes that plants initiate to counteract the negative effects of drought. The present investigation aims to study the impact of exogenously applied ABA in mitigating drought stress in rice varieties. Six rice genotypes were exposed to four types of treatments such as control (C), osmotic stress (2% mannitol; M), ABA (10 µM) and M + ABA for six days. The results revealed that osmotic stress decreased plant growth and osmolyte production due to a decrease in their biosynthetic enzyme activities. However, exogenously applied abscisic acid mitigates the effect of drought stress by increasing the overall growth of the seedlings through enhanced proline accumulation and increased antioxidative enzyme activities. The enzymes involved in proline synthesis, such as P5CS and OAT, had enhanced expression in response to exogeneously applied ABA. Aldehyde oxidase remained unresponsive to the application of abscisic acid in the absence of osmotic stress but showed enhanced expression when abscisic acid was applied along with osmotic stress. The present study concluded that applying 10 µM of ABA induces tolerance in rice genotypes under drought stress through activating ROS scavenging system and proline accumulation.