Abstract

DROUGHT STRESS IMPACTS ON WHEAT AND ITS RESISTANCE MECHANISMS

Author(s): Anita Parajuli

Wheat is the most commonly grown and used cereal crop due to its economic and social benefits. Nature’s vengeance, in the form of numerous biotic and abiotic stress factors, has an adverse impact on plant growth and productivity. Drought is a polygenically managed stress and a major agricultural risk that reduces crop production and restricts effective land potential insight around the world. Drought stress induces a number of morphological, physiological, biochemical, and molecular responses in crops. Drought tolerance is a dynamic trait regulated by polygene, whose expression is affected by a number of environmental factors. We have looked at how drought stress affects development, penology, water and nutrient relationships, photosynthesis, assimilate partitioning etc in wheat plant. Wheat reacts to prevailing water stress in a number of morphological, physiological, and biochemical ways at cellular, and molecular levels, making it a complicated phenomenon. Physiological experiments are being performed to determine the changes that occur in the wheat plant as a result of drought stress. Changes in the root systems such as effects on height, leaf senescence, flowering, and so on, are examples of morphological changes. Changes in cell growth pattern, chlorophyll content, plant water relation, photosynthetic disturbances are all the examples of physiological changes. Different chemicals, biomolecules, enzymes are involved in biochemical changes. Drought escape, drought avoidance, and drought tolerance are three mechanisms that plants use to cope with drought stress. As a result, the focus of this review paper is on the effects of water scarcity on the morphological, physiological, biochemical, and molecular responses of wheat as well as the potential losses caused by drought stress and management strategies.