ENDOPHYTES: A POTENT SEED BIO-PRIMING AGENTS FOR ABIOTIC STRESS MITIGATION IN SELECTED CROPS
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Date
2022-03-29
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University of Agricultural Sciences GKVK, Bangalore
Abstract
Drought is a major limiting factor influencing plant growth and development. In recent years there have been several studies to demonstrate the use of endophytes in mitigating stress tolerances. Endophytes include symptomless bacteria and fungi that are ubiquitously present in the intercellular spaces of the ost plants. Endophytes isolated from extreme habitats are able to colonize the non-host plants and impart stress tolerance response. Against this background rea of knowledge, the present study was taken up to study the role of selected 8 endophytes on early seedling growth of maize, green gram, soybean, and rinjal. Among 8 fungal endophytes, K-23, LAS-6 and P-37 had shown increased seedling growth of pre-germinated maize seeds both under control and PEG- 8000 induced drought stress conditions. Not only in the seedling level but also in the greenhouse conditions these selected endophytes (K-23, LAS-6 mad P- 7) have been reported a significant increase in the plant height, stem girth, leaf area, root volume, photosynthetic rate, chlorophyll content, antioxidant nzyme ctivity, and yield content when plants were subjected to drought stress. In order to unravel the molecular mechanism, maize plants inoculated with K-23 were ubjected to comparative transcriptome analysis. It revealed that genes involved in the photosynthetic pathway, synthesis of secondary metabolites, starch and ucrose metabolism were upregulated in endophyte enriched seedlings when subjected to drought stress. This study set as proof of concept to demonstrate ndophytes adapted to extreme habitats can be effectively used to modulate non-host plant responses to abiotic stresses such as drought