Potassium and salicylic acid function synergistically to promote the drought resilience through upregulation of antioxidant profile for enhancing potassium use efficiency and wheat yield

Abstract

Inducing tolerance against drought stress with plant growth regulator and plant nutrients is vital for ensuring food security and sustainable crop production. The present study was undertaken to assess the influence of salicylic acid (SA) either seed primed or foliar application (1.1, 2.2, 0.7 and 1.4 mM SA) coupled with potassium (K) fertilisation (0, 50 and 100 kg/ha) on wheat yield and nutrients uptake under drought stress (100% field capacity [FC], 60% FC, 30% FC) at tillering stage. Findings revealed that drought stress substantially reduced yield components, yield and grain nutrients content and uptake, whereas the potassium use efficiency (KUE) and antioxidant profile was improved. However, the foliar application of 0.7 mM SA and 1.1 mM SA as seed priming had increased number of spikes, thousand grain weight, grains per spike, grain and biomass yield, N, P, K content and K uptake, KUE and antioxidant profile both under no stress and drought stress treatments indicating the key role in ameliorating the ill effects of drought stress as compared with no SA application. Moreover, K fertilisation at 100 kg/ha had improved growth, yield and yield components, plant nutrient uptake and antioxidant profile except proline under both no stress and mild stress as compared with no K application. These results suggested that the combined use of SA either as foliar or seed primed with higher K fertilisation can substantially improve wheat yield, and grain nutritional content under mild and severe drought stresses.

Effect of Irrigation Intervals and Foliar Spray with Salicylic Acid on the production of Two Bread wheat cultivars in Newly Reclaimed Land

“…Wheat plants which were irrigated every 6 days and sprayed with 300 ppm salicylic acid gained the highest mean values of flag leaf area (69.5 cm 2 ) in the 2 nd season, kernels weight spike -1 (4.9 g), and 1000-grain weight (70.5 g) in the 1 st season., while the interaction between I 12 ×SA 1 recorded the lowest value for these traits, and the highest value for WUE (0.73 kg m 3 ) was attained from (I 12 ×SA 3 ) in the 2 nd season. Our results are in harmony with those acquired by Sofy (2015), El-Saadony et al (2021) and Munsif et al (2022).…”

“…The grain yield increase was related to the improvement of most agronomic traits that correlated with grain yield, in response to short irrigation intervals (Aissaoui and Fenni, 2021). Many researchers reported that shorter irrigation intervals improved the growth and yield traits of wheat crops (Shah et al, 2016;Ragheb et al, 2017;Ahmed and Mustafa, 2018;Walsh et al, 2020;Munsif et al, 2022). Increasing irrigation period was followed by a significant decrease in all studied traits except for protein under sandy soils conditions, which leads to rapid loss of water and nutrients, and exposes plants to drought stress, thus an increase in protein content of wheat plants (El-Saadony et al, 2021).…”

“…Sofy (2015) evident that wheat treated with SA achieved highly significantly increased in plant height, number of grains plant -1 , the weight of 1000-grains, and a beneficial regulatory role in plants sown under drought stress conditions. Using SA resulted in enhanced assimilation, nutrient uptake, nitrate reduction, and photosynthesis, improved flow absorption translocation, cytoplasmic streaming, and increased cell safety, which led to increased yield and its components for wheat as well as ameliorating the negative impacts of drought stress (Karim andKhursheed, 2011 andMunsif et al, 2022).…”

“…L.) consider the most important cereal crop in the world regarding its cultivated area and production. In Egypt, cultivated area of wheat was about 3.4 million fed with a production of 8.9 million tons with an Ali et al, 2022 average of 2.6 tons fed -1 , and imports 10 million tons of wheat to fill the gap (FAOSTAT, 2020). The upper Egypt region is located in the southern part of the country, the region is distinguished by high temperatures, and it grows wheat by about 17% (Mohiy and Salous, 2022).…”

“…Sofy (2015) pointed out that drought stress at the grain filling stage significantly decreased plant height, spike length, number of grains spike -1 , 1000-grain weight in wheat plants, and mitigation of the adverse effects of drought via the application of salicylic acid. Erdal et al (2011) and Munsif et al (2022) pointed out that salicylic acid may enhance stress tolerance in plants by interactive impacts on some physiological processes (transpiration rate, photosynthesis, stomata regulation, ion uptake, and plant growth.…”