Characterization and Functional Genomic Analysis of Lea (Late Embryogenesis Abundant) Gene in Reference to Drought Stress in Wheat (Triticum Aestivum L.) by Using Essr Primers

Abstract

Plant growth and productivity are greatly affected by environmental stresses such as drought, high salinity and low temperature. The aim of this study was to evaluate the 20 Wheat germplasm at morphological, biochemical, physiological and at molecular level under imposed draught stress along with functional genomics of group 3 LEA gene. For this purpose 20 wheat genotypes were treated with PEG to imposed simulated drought condition. After the present study it was observed that a progressive water stress induced through PEG-6000 causes significant morphological, physiological, biochemical and molecular changes in wheat. In this study, it was found that various morphological characters like germination, root length shoot length at seedling stage, plant height, number of tillers, flag leaf area and spike length at preharvest stage, number of spikelet per spike, number of grains per spike and 1000 grain weights at post harvest stage are considerably influenced by drought stress. The genotype K9351 and K1205 seem to be promising for high yield as they exhibited higher yield under water stress owing to the existence of drought tolerance mechanism through better management of root shoot mechanism, leaf area, photosynthetic rate, chlorophyll content, proline and yield related characters. The studied germplasm were characterized at molecular level using 29 designed EST-SSRr markers. The similarity coefficient value for all the 20 genotypes ranged from 0.23 to 0.63. The minimum similarity exhibited by genotype PBW550 and DBW17. Whereas, the maximum similarity was shown by genotype DBW16 and RAJ4246. This study has shown the existence of considerable genetic variation among the genotypes considered with may help for further selection and breeding. The result shows very high expression value of group 3 LEA gene for genotype HD2987 and K9351 as compared to genotype DBW16 and PBW550 at every level of polyethylene glycol concentration under imposed drought stress condition. Overall, the results obtained from the current study are helpful to elucidate physiological and molecular mechanism underlying the response of plants to drought stress, and discovery of genes for stress tolerance in wheat.