Drought stress tolerance analysis of Populus ussuriensis clones with different ploidies

Abstract

The selection of drought-tolerant plants is an important aspect of plant breeding. We studied physiological and biochemical mechanisms of different ploidies of Populus ussuriensis Kom. that relate to drought stress tolerance. We used a 5% (v/v) polyethylene glycol (PEG-6000) solution to simulate drought stress. We recorded leaf phenotypes including color, dry area and curl degree. We evaluated sequential variations in some drought stress tolerance-related physiological and biochemical indices and compared these among diploid clones (CK), triploid clones (T12) and tetraploid clones (F20). T12 leaves exhibited slightly more drought stress damage than CK and F20 leaves. CK leaves suffered the most severe drought stress damage. The physiological and biochemical indices of the different ploidies differed significantly 12 days after drought stress treatment. The activities of superoxide dismutase, peroxidase, catalase and proline in the triploid (T12) leaves were the highest. The relative electric conductivity and malondialdehyde content of T12 leaves were the lowest. The index values of F20 were between those of the diploid and triploid. In consideration of these results, the drought resistance of the three different ploidies of P. ussuriensis can be ranked as T12 > F20 > CK. We speculate that the gene expression patterns of polyploid clones of poplar will change after genome doubling and that some of the drought stress tolerance-related physiological and biochemical indices will be improved, resulting in greater drought tolerance of polyploid clones.