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. 2022 Jan;29(1):444-452.
doi: 10.1016/j.sjbs.2021.09.009. Epub 2021 Sep 15.

Morphological, physiological and molecular assessment of cotton for drought tolerance under field conditions

Muhammad Anwar  1   2 , Muhammad Asif Saleem  3 , Ma Dan  4 , Waqas Malik  3 , Sami Ul-Allah  5 , Muhammad Qadir Ahmad  3 , Abdul Qayyum  3 , Muhammad Waqas Amjid  6 , Zia Ullah Zia  7 , Hammad Afzal  3 , Muhammad Asif  3 , Muhammad Aneeq Ur Rahman  1 , Zhangli Hu  1   8
Affiliations

Morphological, physiological and molecular assessment of cotton for drought tolerance under field conditions

Muhammad Anwar et al. Saudi J Biol Sci. 2022 Jan.

Abstract

Climate change could be an existential threat to many crops. Drought and heat stress are becoming harder for cultivated crops. Cotton in Pakistan is grown under natural high temperature and low moisture, could be used as a source of heat and drought tolerance. Therefore, the study was conducted to morphological, physiological and molecular characterization of cotton genotypes under field conditions. A total of 25 cotton genotypes were selected from the gene pool of Pakistan based on tolerance to heat and drought stress. In field trail, the stress related traits like boll retention percentage, plant height, number of nodes and inter-nodal distance were recorded. In physiological assessment, traits such as photosynthesis rate, stomatal conductance, transpiration rate, leaf temperature, relative water content and excised leaf water loss were observed. At molecular level, a set of 19 important transcription factors, controlling drought/heat stress tolerance (HSPCB, GHSP26, HSFA2, HSP101, HSP3, DREB1A, DREB2A, TPS, GhNAC2, GbMYB5, GhWRKY41, GhMKK3, GhMPK17, GhMKK1, GhMPK2, APX1, HSC70, ANNAT8, and GhPP2A1) were analyzed from all genotypes. Data analyses depicted that boll retention percentage, photosynthesis, stomatal conductance, relative water content under the stress conditions were associated with the presence of important drought & heat TF/genes which depicts high genetic potential of Pakistani cotton varieties against abiotic stress. The variety MNH-886 appeared in medium plant height, high boll retention percentage, high relative water content, photosynthesis rate, stomatal conductance, transpiration rate and with maximum number transcription factors under study. The variety may be used as source material for heat and drought tolerant cotton breeding. The results of this study may be useful for the cotton breeders to develop genotype adoptable to environmental stresses under climate change scenario.

Keywords: DREB; Drought; HSP; Heat; MKK; MPK; Tolerance.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Screening of transcription factors GbWRKY41, GHSP20, ANNAT8 in selected genotypes.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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