Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Leila Fahmideh ¹
• Ayoub Mazarie ²
• Parisa Pahlavan ²

¹ Department of plant Breeding and Biotechnology, Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Gorgan, Iran

² Department of Plant Breeding and Biotechnology, University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran

Abstract

Plant growth is greatly influenced by environmental stresses including water deficit, high salinity and extreme temperatures. Therefore, the identification of genes especially those regulatory ones whose expression enables plants to adapt to or to tolerate these stresses, is essential. MYB proteins belong to a big family of transcription factors of plants and they are also active in different stages of plants’ growth and their response to stress. This study was aimed at investigating the expression pattern of TaMYB73 gene, changes in the osmotic regulators content, relative water content in leaves, protein as well as photosynthetic pigments contents of four barley cultivars native to Sistan region (Aklil, Nomar, Nimroz, Zahak) under different levels of drought stress (100% (control), 75% and 50% field capacity). This experiment was performed as a factorial in a completely randomized design with three replications. Results indicated that increasing drought stress levels led to a decrease in the amount of photosynthetic pigments, protein and relative leaf water contents. However, proline and carbohydrate concentrations, carotenoid content and the relative expression of TaMYB73 gene increased. Among the cultivars investigated in this research, the rate of changes in osmotic regulators content, photosynthetic pigments and relative water contents as well as relative expression of TaMYB73 gene in Nimroz cultivar was the highest followed by Aklil cultivar. In order to facilitate the classification of resistant cultivars in terms of stresses, drought stress in particular, through laboratory studies, it is suggested that additional tests be performed in future investigations to confirm the above results.

Keywords

• Proteins myeloblastosis
• Osmotic mechanisms
• Transcription factors
• Quantitative polymerase chain reaction

Main Subjects

• Biotechnology