Open Access

ARTICLE

Drought-Mediated Modulation in Metabolomic Profiling of Leaf, Growth, Ecophysiology and Antioxidants

by Khalid Rehman Hakeem^1,2,3,*, Hesham F. Alharby¹, M. Irfan Qureshi⁴

1 Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
2 Princess Dr. Najla Bint Saud Al-Saud Center for Excellence Research in Biotechnology, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
3 Department of Public Health, Daffodil International University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
4 Department of Biotechnology, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India

* Corresponding Authors: Khalid Rehman Hakeem. Email: ,

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Multi-omics Approach to Understand Plant Stress Tolerance)

Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany 2023, 92(12), 3323-3344. https://doi.org/10.32604/phyton.2023.030212

Received 26 March 2023; Accepted 02 November 2023; Issue published 28 December 2023

Abstract

Abiotic stresses, including drought, have been found to affect the growth and medicinal quality of numerous herbs. The proposed study aims to study the effects of different drought regimes on the metabolic profile, growth, ecophysiology, cellular antioxidants, and antioxidant potential of Nigella sativa (Black cumin) leaf. Forty-day-old seedlings of N. sativa were exposed to three regimes of drought (control, moderate and high) for a week. UPLC-MS/MS metabolic profile of the leaf reveals the presence of more than a hundred metabolites belonging to anthocyanins, chalcones, dihydro flavonoids, flavonoids, flavanols, flavones, flavonoid carbonoside, isoflavones, etc. Drought was found to alter the contents of identified metabolites. Drought stress-induced oxidative stress and increased production of hydrogen peroxide and superoxide anions. Physiological changes, activities of antioxidant enzymes, contents of antioxidants, and proline were significantly high under drought to protect against the low water regimes. Furthermore, stressed leaf extract had higher antioxidant potential. Thus, N. sativa leaf bears multiple metabolic pathways and can tolerate a higher degree of drought or osmotic stress.

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Keywords

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Supplementary Material

Supplementary Material File

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