Understanding cross-tolerance mechanism and effect of drought priming on individual heat stress and combinatorial heat and drought stress in chickpea

In northern India, chickpea experiences abrupt heat and drought stress during the late developmental stage and entails significant production loss. In the present study, the effect of heat stress and combined stress (heat and drought) was assessed in five varieties of chickpea along with the underlying mechanism of cross-tolerance by priming. Healthy seedlings (24 days old) were primed with mild drought stress and exposed to three different temperatures, i.e., 38 °C, 35 °C, and 32 °C for 12, 24, and 36 h respectively, and also in combination with drought. The damage and tolerance were evaluated based on biochemical and physiological indicators. Results indicate that significant response was observed at 35 °C as compared to 32 and 38 °C in terms of decrease in leaf water content, increased electrolyte leakage and lipid peroxidation, decreased chlorophyll content, increased accumulation of proline and total sugars, and increased antioxidative activity of superoxide dismutase, catalase, guaiacol peroxidase, ascorbate peroxidase, and glutathione reductase. The consequence of combined stress was more distinct than the individual heat stress and cannot be extrapolated from the synergistic effect of the two stresses. In addition, priming induced cross-tolerance at 35 °C by improving the membrane damage, photorespiration, photosynthetic pigment, osmolyte accumulation, and some antioxidative enzymes. On the basis of all the above parameters, PDG4 was identified as the best performing variety and tolerant to heat stress while GPF2 was the worst performing and sensitive to heat stress. It can be inferred that both severity and duration of stress are important and priming can be considered as an important tool to induce cross-tolerance in crop plants.