TY - EJOU AU - Masud, Abdul Awal Chowdhury AU - Karim, Md. Fazlul AU - Bhuyan, M. H. M. Borhannuddin AU - Mahmud, Jubayer Al AU - Nahar, Kamrun AU - Fujita, Masayuki AU - Hasanuzzaman, Mirza TI - Potassium-Induced Regulation of Cellular Antioxidant Defense and Improvement of Physiological Processes in Wheat under Water Deficit Condition T2 - Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany PY - 2021 VL - 90 IS - 2 SN - 1851-5657 AB - Drought is the most common form of abiotic stress that reduces plant growth and productivity. It causes plant injuries through elevated production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Potassium (K) is a vital plant nutrient that notably ameliorates the detrimental effect of drought stress in the plant. A pot experiment was conducted at the Laboratory of Plant Stress Responses, Faculty of Agriculture, Kagawa University, Japan, under controlled environment of green house to explore the role of K in mitigating drought severity in wheat (Triticum asevitum L.) seedlings. Three days after germination, seedlings were exposed to three water regimes viz., 100, 50, and 20% field capacity (FC) for 21 days. Potassium was adjusted in Hoagland nutrient solution at 0, 6 and 12 mM concentration and applied to pot instead of normal water. Results show that, water deficit stress notably reduced plant growth, biomass accumulation, leaf relative water content (RWC) along with reduced photosynthetic pigments. Increased amount of biochemical stress markers viz., malondialdehyde (MDA), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), methylglyoxal (MG), proline (Pro) as well as an impaired antioxidant defense system were observed in drought affected wheat plants. On the contrary, K supplementation resulted in improvement of biochemical and physiological parameters that worked behind in improving growth and development of the wheat plants. In addition, enzymes of ascorbateglutathione (AsA-GSH) cycle were also enhanced by supplemented K that accelerated the ROS detoxification process in plant. Although glyoxalse system did not performed well till MG was detoxified might following another short stepped pathways. Our results revealed that drought stressed plants showed better performances in terms of biochemical and physiological attributes, antioxidant defense and glyoxalase system, as well as ROS detoxification due to K supplementation with better performance at 12 mM K added in 50% FC growing condition. KW - Abiotic stress; drought; plant nutrient; relative water content; reactive oxygen species; antioxidant; H2O2; methylglyoxal DO - 10.32604/phyton.2021.013259