Improves the Resilience of Cucumber Seedlings under High-Light Stress through End-of-Day Addition of a Low Intensity of a Single Light Quality

Abstract

In order to investigate whether an end-of-day (EOD) addition of a single light quality could help alleviate high-light stress in a cucumber, cucumber seedlings were subjected to a 9 d period of high-light stress (light intensity was 1300 ± 50 μmol·m−2·s−1) when they were growing to 3 leaves and 1 heart, while the red light (R), blue light (B), green light (G), far-red light (FR), and ultraviolet A (UVA) light were added in the end-of-day period. The present study was conducted to measure antioxidants, chlorophyll content, and its synthetic degradative enzymes and chlorophyll a fluorescence in response to the degree of stress in cucumber seedlings. The experimental results demonstrated that the addition of blue light, UVA light, and green light significantly decreased the SOD and POD activities in the middle of the treatment (6th day) compared to the dark (D) treatment and improved the absorption performance of the PSI reaction centre of the cucumber seedling leaves to a certain extent (PIABS), but the PSII capacity capture ability (TRo/RC) of the three treatments decreased compared to the D treatment. The MDA content of all the treatments had a significant decrease compared to that of the D treatment. The MDA content of all the treatments was significantly lower than that of D, and its FV/FM was increased to different degrees; the chlorophyll degrading enzyme PPH activity was significantly lower than that of the D treatment when a single light quality was added at the EOD period on the 9th d of treatment. In conclusion, cucumber seedlings subjected to short-term high-light stress can be added during the EOD period with a low-light intensity of a single R, G, B, or UVA light.