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. 2020 Aug 31;20(1):400.
doi: 10.1186/s12870-020-02581-3.

Activities of leaf and spike carbohydrate-metabolic and antioxidant enzymes are linked with yield performance in three spring wheat genotypes grown under well-watered and drought conditions

Sajid Shokat  1   2 , Dominik K Großkinsky  3   4 , Thomas Roitsch  5 , Fulai Liu  5
Affiliations

Activities of leaf and spike carbohydrate-metabolic and antioxidant enzymes are linked with yield performance in three spring wheat genotypes grown under well-watered and drought conditions

Sajid Shokat et al. BMC Plant Biol. .

Abstract

Background: To improve our understanding about the physiological mechanism of grain yield reduction at anthesis, three spring wheat genotypes [L1 (advanced line), L2 (Vorobey) and L3 (Punjab-11)] having contrasting yield potential under drought in field were investigated under controlled greenhouse conditions, drought stress was imposed at anthesis stage by withholding irrigation until all plant available water was depleted, while well-watered control plants were kept at 95% pot water holding capacity.

Results: Compared to genotype L1 and L2, pronounced decrease in grain number (NGS), grain yield (GY) and harvest index (HI) were found in genotype L3, mainly due to its greater kernel abortion (KA) under drought. A significant positive correlation of leaf monodehydroascorbate reductase (MDHAR) with both NGS and HI was observed. In contrast, significant negative correlations of glutathione S-transferase (GST) and vacuolar invertase (vacInv) both within source and sink were found with NGS and HI. Likewise, a significant negative correlation of leaf abscisic acid (ABA) with NGS was noticed. Moreover, leaf aldolase and cell wall peroxidase (cwPOX) activities were significantly and positively associated with thousand kernel weight (TKW).

Conclusion: Distinct physiological markers correlating with yield traits and higher activity of leaf aldolase and cwPOX may be chosen as predictive biomarkers for higher TKW. Also, higher activity of MDHAR within the leaf can be selected as a predictive biomarker for higher NGS in wheat under drought. Whereas, lower activity of vacInv and GST both within leaf and spike can be selected as biomarkers for higher NGS and HI. The results highlighted the role of antioxidant and carbohydrate-metabolic enzymes in the modulation of source-sink balance in wheat crops, which could be used as bio-signatures for breeding and selection of drought-resilient wheat genotypes for a future drier climate.

Keywords: Antioxidant activity; Carbohydrate metabolism; Drought; Kernel abortion; Wheat.

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Conflict of interest statement

There is no financial and non-financial competing interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Analysis of variance for the three genotypes and boxplots for biomass (a) grain yield (b), harvest index (c), thousand kernel weight (d), number of grains spike− 1 (e) and kernel abortion (f) under well-watered and drought conditions. WW = well-watered; D = drought; PW = P value of drought effect; PG = P value of genotype effect and PWxG = P value of the interaction of drought by genotype
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Biplot of PC1 and PC2 derived from PCA analysis under well-watered (a) and drought condition (b) Prefix “L” is indicating leaf antioxidant or carbohydrate metabolic enzymes or phytohormones and prefix “S” is indicating spike antioxidant or carbohydrate metabolic enzymes or phytohormones
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Heat map showing the effect of drought stress on carbohydrate catalyzing and antioxidant enzymes of leaf (a) and spike (b) in three wheat genotypes. Six rows of each column are indicating well-watered and drought conditions for genotype L1, L2 and L3, respectively. Blue color indicates highest and red color indicates lowest value respectively. All other colors represent intermediate activities/values. Small arrows are specifying conversion of sugars from on form to another. Upward bold arrows are showing rise in the activity of enzymes in comparison to well-watered conditions and downward arrows indicating decrease in the activity
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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