Individual and combined effects of drought and heat on antioxidant parameters and growth performance in Buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris L.) genotypes

Drought and heat stress are two critical threats to crop growth and sustainable agriculture worldwide. In the last decade, many studies focused on the response of crops to a single stress, nevertheless studying the response of plants to a combination stress may be critical to our understanding of stress tolerance in plants and the development of tolerant genotypes. Buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris L.) is a warm-season grass known in arid and semiarid regions for its tolerance to heat and drought stress, productivity, and forage quality. However, in our previous works, several accessions have exhibited different responses to abiotic stresses. Therefore, the objective of this work was to evaluate the effects of combination of drought and heat stresses on biochemical parameters and plant growth and to compare the impacts of the stresses separately and when combined. We found that sensitive genotype exhibited higher lipid peroxidation content, lower total reducing power values and reduced catalase and superoxide dismutase activities than tolerant under drought or heat stress or combination stress. In this study, heat stress had a predominant effect on buffel grass genotypes over drought stress, which explained why simultaneous application of heat and drought revealed similar biochemical and growth responses to the heat stress. Antioxidant metabolism seems to be critical for tolerate abiotic stress. This study may provide useful information to perform a rapid and low-cost characterization in new buffel grass germplasm and to identify genotypes with better growth performance under drought and heat conditions.