Drought Stress Effects on Photosynthesis, Chlorophyll Fluorescence and Water Relations in Tolerant and Susceptible Chickpea (Cicer Arietinum L.) Genotypes

Abstract

In order to evaluate morphological and physiological traits related to drought tolerance and to determine the best criteria for screening and identification of drought-tolerant genotypes, we grew two tolerant genotypes (MCC392, MCC877) and two sensitive genotypes (MCC68, MCC448) of chickpea under drought stress (25% field capacity) and control (100% field capacity) conditions and assessed the effect of drought stress on growth, water relations, photosynthesis, chlorophyll fluorescence and chlorophyll content in the seedling, early flowering and podding stages. Drought stress significantly decreased shoot dry weight, CO 2 assimilation rate (A), transpiration rate (E), and PSII photochemical efficiency (F v /F m ) in all genotypes. In the seedling and podding stages, PSII photochemical efficiency was higher in tolerant genotypes than in sensitive genotypes under drought stress. Water use efficiency (WUE) and CO 2 assimilation rate were also higher in tolerant than in sensitive genotypes in all investigated stages under drought stress. Our results indicated that water use efficiency, A and F v /F m can be useful markers in studies of tolerance to drought stress and in screening adapted cultivars of chickpea under drought stress.K Ke ey y w wo or rd ds s: : Chlorophyll fluorescence, chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), drought stress, photosynthesis.

Morpho-physiological and Biochemical Responses of Camelina (Camelina sativa crantz) Genotypes under Drought Stress

“…Reduction in transpiration rate is a plant response that indicates water conservation and reduced water loss through stomata (Jones et al, 1985). Various studies revealed that transpiration rate decreased under drought stress (Egret and Tevini, 2002;Rahbarian et al, 2011), which possibly resulted from reduced photosynthetic rate and stomatal conductance in drought affected plants as happened in present study. Our results regarding free proline content are in agreement with those reported by Unyayar et al (2009) who revealed that high concentration of free proline content in sunflower leaf becomes a solute under drought stress and play its role in intercellular osmotic adjustment.…”

Evaluation of canola chlorophyll index and leaf nitrogen under wide range of soil moisture

“…Impaired mitosis, limited cell elongation and expansion result in reduced plant height, leaf area and the crop yield of plants growing under drought Days after treatment application Days after treatment application stress. Therefore, the increased chlorophyll content under drought stress may be related to a decrease in the leaf area (Rahbarian et al, 2011). Figure 6 shows that the concentration of leaf N remains nearly constant from 2 kPa suction head up to 200 kPa suction head.…”

Effect of Biostimulants on Several Physiological Characteristics and Chlorophyll Content in Broccoli under Drought Stress and Re-watering

“…Chlorophyll degradation and/or chlorophyll synthesis deficiency occur when plants are subjected to drought stress (Ahmed et al, 2009;Rahbarian et al, 2011;Guo et al, 2016). According to Hussein et al (2008) drought stress resulted in chlorophyll content increase, while Farhad et al (2011), Pirzad et al (2011 and Ma et al (2015) did not observe any significant changes in its content.…”

“…It affects metabolic processes and gas exchange parameters (stomatal conductance, internal CO2 concentration and permeability of cell membrane) (Yordanov et al, 2000). One of the first responses of a plant to drought stress is stomatal closing, which results in limited water loss (Galmes et al, 2007a;Rahbarian et al, 2011). Decreasing internal CO2 concentration (Ci) and inhibition of ribulose-1, 5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase enzyme activity and ATP synthesis lead to a decrease in net photosynthetic rate under drought stress (Dulai et al, 2006).…”