Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Keywords
Barley, Awn, Leaf, Lemma, Palea, Drought, Water status, Gas exchange, Metabolites
Journal/Book/Conference Title
BMC Plant Biology
Volume
16
Issue
248
Abstract
Background: Photosynthetic organs of the cereal spike (ear) provide assimilate for grain filling, but their response to drought is poorly understood. In this study, we characterized the drought response of individual organs of the barley spike (awn, lemma, and palea) and compared them with a vegetative organ (fifth leaf). Understanding differences in physiological and metabolic responses between the leaf and spike organs during drought can help us develop high yielding cultivars for environments where terminal drought is prevalent.
Results: We exposed barley plants to drought by withholding water for 4 days at the grain filling stage and compared changes in: (1) relative water content (RWC), (2) osmotic potential (Ψs), (3) osmotic adjustment (OA), (4) gas exchange, and (5) metabolite content between organs. Drought reduced RWC and Ψs in all four organs, but the decrease in RWC was greater and there was a smaller change in Ψs in the fifth leaf than the spike organs. We detected evidence of OA in the awn, lemma, and palea, but not in the fifth leaf. Rates of gas exchange declined more rapidly in the fifth leaf than awn during drought. We identified 18 metabolites but, only ten metabolites accumulated significantly during drought in one or more organs. Among these, proline accumulated in all organs during drought while accumulation of the other metabolites varied between organs. This may suggest that each organ in the same plant uses a different set of osmolytes for drought resistance.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that photosynthetic organs of the barley spike maintain higher water content, greater osmotic adjustment, and higher rates of gas exchange than the leaf during drought. Keywords: Barley, Awn, Leaf, Lemma, Palea, Drought, Water status, Gas exchange, Metabolites
Department
Department of Biology
Department
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Original Publication Date
2016
DOI of published version
10.1186/s12870-016-0922-1
Repository
UNI ScholarWorks, University of Northern Iowa, Rod Library
Date Digital
2016
Copyright
©2016 Mark E. Sherrard, Kirk P. Manfredi, and Tilahun Abebe. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Language
EN
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Hein, Jordan A.; Sherrard, Mark E.; Manfredi, Kirk P.; and Abebe, Tilahun, "The fifth leaf and spike organs of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) display different physiological and metabolic responses to drought stress" (2016). Faculty Publications. 22.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/bio_facpub/22
Comments
First published in BMC Plant Biology, v. 16 n.248 (2016), 12 pages, published by BioMed Central Ltd. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-016-0922-1