Pretreatment of seed with H2O2 enhances drought tolerance of wheat ( Triticum aestivum L.) seedlings

By Li-heng He, Zhiqiang Gao, Runzhi Li. 2009

117 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Drought is an important environmental constraint limiting the productivity of many crops worldwide. Seedling tolerance to drought is crucial for crop growth and development through the whole season under water-limited condition. Experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of seed pretreatment by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) on drought tolerance in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) seedlings. H2O2-pretreated seeds exhibited 56% higher in germination rate than the water-pretreated seeds (control) under PGE-induced drought condition. Level of H2O2 in seedlings arising from H2O2-treated seeds grown under drought stress was markedly lower than the controls, indicating the operation of antioxidant system in them. These seedlings exhibited increased growth characteristics including higher net photosynthetic rate, leaf area and dry weight. Moreover, H2O2 treatment improved water use efficiency (WUE) and proline level. H2O2 pretreatment enhanced the membrane stability, as revealed from greatly reduced membrane damage rate (MDA) and malondialdehyde (MDA) content. The seedlings showed the higher expression of antioxidative enzyme such as catalase (CAT) and ascorbate peroxidase (APX). The present data suggest that H2O2, a stress signal, could trigger the activation of antioxidants in seeds, which persists in the seedlings to alleviate the oxidative damage, leading to improvements in physiological attributes for the seedling growth under drought.   Key words: wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), seed pretreatment, H2O2, signaling, drought tolerance, membrane permeability, antioxidative system.

Subfields: Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9b9e052a7f1cae60adff3633207ff2e7d7139ea5

How researchers see this paper

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In Plant Science

1. Muhammad Iqbal
2. M. Ashraf
3. R. Rasheed
4. R. Terzi
5. A. Sağlam
6. A. Kadıoğlu
7. N. Akram
8. E. A. Ibrahim

Citations in the corpus

• Hydrogen peroxide pretreatment induces osmotic stress tolerance by influencing osmolyte and abscisic acid levels in maize leaves (2014, background): “He et al. (2009) found the same results in drought-stressed wheat seedlings had arisen from H2O2-treated seeds.”
• Alleviation of adverse effects of drought stress on common bean ( Phaseolus vulgaris L.) by exogenous application of hydrogen peroxide (2011, unknown): “Similarly He et al. (2009) also found that H 2 O 2 pretreatment enhanced the photosynthetic rate in wheat seedlings under PGE-induced drought condition.”
• Hydrogen peroxide modulates antioxidant system and nutrient relation in maize (Zea mays L.) under water-deficit conditions (2015, background): “Exogenous application of H2O2 had improved plant biomass in wheat under drought stress (He et al. 2009).”