Physiological responses of Robinia pseudoacacia seedlings to drought stress

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Ph.D. Student, Department of Forestry and Forest Economics, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, I.R. Iran.

2 Assoc. Prof., Department of Forestry and Forest Economics, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, I.R. Iran.

3 Senior researcher, Research Institute of Forests and Rangelands, Tehran, I.R. Iran

Abstract

Physiological response of different species to drought stress can help to recognize the effective mechanisms in drought stress and choose the best species for planting in dry lands of Iran. This study investigated the physiological mechanisms of Robinia pseudoacacia L. seedlings in draught conditions. An experiment was carried out in a completely randomized block with one treatment (irrigation) at five levels (1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 -day intervals) with five replicates in one-year-old seedlings of Robinia pseudoacacia L. The effects of drought stress, chlorophyll fluorescence parameters (Fv/Fm, Fm & F0), pigments concentrate (total chlorophyle, chlorophyle ‘a’ and ‘b’), and proline content of leaves were measured with sampling from leaves of mentioned treatments. Drought stress caused a significant reduction in maximum photochemical efficiency of photosystem II (Fv/Fm), maximum fluorescence (Fm) and minimum fluorescence (F0) (p < 0.05). The chlorophyll content was not significantly affected by drought between watering regimes. With increasing the intensity of drought, proline accumulation in leaves was increased from 9.82 in 1day treatment to 77.40 (µmol/gfw) in the 9-day irrigation treatment. Measuring the chlorophyll fluorescence parameters and proline content would be useful as a degree of drought tolerance indicator for selecting the adapted species to arid and semiarid regions..

Keywords

Forest and Wood Products
Volume 70, Issue 3
October 2017
Pages 393-400

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