Abstract
Scarcity of water has been a serious agricultural hindrance to crop productivity since antiquity. Drought-stressed loss in wheat yield likely exceeds losses from all other causes, since both the severity and duration of the stress are censorious. Here, we have reviewed the effects of drought stress on the morphological, physiological, and biochemical attributes along with the growth impacts, water relations, and photosynthesis impacts in wheat. This review also illustrates the mechanism of drought resistance in wheat. Historical drought years in Nepal have been identified and the yield losses were assessed. Wheat encounters a variety of morphological, physiological, biochemical responses at cellular and molecular levels towards prevailing water stress, thus making it a complex phenomenon. Drought stress affects leaf size, stems elongation and root proliferation, imbalance plant-water relations and decline water-use efficiency. Different types of physiological research are ongoing to find out the changes occurs in the wheat plant as a result of drought stress. Morphological changes can be looked through two ways: changes in root system and changes in shoot system such as effects on height, leaf senescence, flowering, and so on. Physiological changes involve changes in cell growth pattern, chlorophyll contents, photosynthetic disturbances, plant-water relations, etc. Biochemical changes occur in different chemical, biomolecules, and enzymes. Plants portray several mechanisms to withstand drought stress which can be classified as Drought escape, Drought avoidance, and Drought tolerance. Selection of wheat genotype that can tolerate water scarcity would be suitable for the breeding program aiming to development of drought tolerant variety under water limited regions.
Highlights
Wheat, Triticum aestivum, is one of the most widely cultivated cereals, in the mediterranean region and other semi-arid regions from temperate to subtropical areas of the world (Ahmed et al, 2019)
In order to survive against drought conditions, the architecture of the root system is considered very important as the good architecture of wheat extracts maximum soil water under drought stress and improving the yield of the grain (Dodd et al, 2011)
Plant height was reduced by 35% and 23% in plants facing drought from stem elongation stage and booting stage, respectively, but only by 7% in plants exposed to drought at grain lling stage
Summary
Triticum aestivum, is one of the most widely cultivated cereals, in the mediterranean region and other semi-arid regions from temperate to subtropical areas of the world (Ahmed et al, 2019). Quick Response Code global climate change and declines in availability of underground water resources for agriculture. It has been proved through many researches that wheat production is drastically affected by abiotic stresses. It can bring to the lack of water resources which influences morphological, biochemical, physiological, and molecular attributes of the plants All of these changes retard the plant growth and the crop yield. Along with the complexity of the drought itself, crop response to water shortage is even more complex because of unpredictable components in the environment and the interaction among biotic and abiotic factors (Nevo and Chen, 2010) Such stress leads to significant reduction in photosynthetic efficiency, stomatal conductance, leaf area and water-use efficiency of wheat (Farooq et al, 2019; Hussain et al, 2016). The objectives of the current study are to assess the possible changes in the morphological and physiological attributes of the wheat crop due to the drought stress and plant tolerance mechanism to the stress
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