Brassinosteroid a Potential Plant Growth Regulator to Alleviate Drought Stress in Apple Cultivars
Sudarshana Kumari 1 and Anju Thakur 2
2024/06/02
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.11424887
ABSTRACT
The objective of this study was to understand the effect of foliar application of brassinosteroid (BRs) to mitigate the adverse impacts of drought stress on one year old apple seedlings of two cultivars i.e. Super Chief and Red Chief. Both the cultivars were pre-treated by foliar application of brassinosteroid (0.05 and 0.10 ppm), 3 days before imposition of drought. Drought was imposed on plants withholding water for 15 and 30 days. Adequate moisture was maintained in control plants near to field capacity. Results of this study revealed that drought for 15 and 30 days led to a reduction in Physio-biochemical characteristics with a higher reduction under 30 days of drought. Pre-treatment with brassinosteroid at 0.05 and 0.10 ppm concentration prior to subjecting to drought helped in minimizing the detrimental effect of drought in both cultivars. However, 0.05 ppm was more effective in counteracting the effect of drought by maintaining vital physiological and biochemical changes. The chlorophyll fluorescence, photosynthetic rate, canopy temperature depression, stomatal conductance and transpiration rate showed significant increase under 0.05 ppm brassinosteroid treatment as compared to 15 and 30 days of stress. However, brassinosteroid at both concentrations could help in the relative accumulation of osmoregulating substances (proline) and activities of anti-oxidant enzymes namely peroxidase under different stress durations and treatments. Foliar application of brassinosteroid (0.05 ppm) prior to imposition of stress can prove the way for reversal of deleterious effects of water stress on apple plants. Therefore, it may be concluded that foliar application of BRs prior to drought has the potential to reverse the deleterious effect of drought in apple plants.
AUTHOR AFFILIATIONS
1 Department of Agronomy, School of Agriculture, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara-144411, Jalandhar, Punjab, India
2 Department of Basic Sciences, Dr. YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Solan-173230, India
CITATION
Kumari S and Thakur A (2024) Brassinosteroid a Potential Plant Growth Regulator to Alleviate Drought Stress in Apple Cultivars. Environ Sci Arch 3(STI-1): 37-48.
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