Abstract
Drought, a detrimental abiotic stress, disturbs many vital processes critical to plant growth and development resulting in subpar crop yield. Unconventional measures such as biofertilizers and nanofertilizers have been reported as reliable solutions to this, however, outcomes vary greatly depending upon the type of organism/particle and its mode of delivery. Seed priming involves treating seeds with organic/inorganic chemicals to ameliorate drought stress by boosting pre-germinative metabolism, maintaining water potential, scavenging free radicals, etc. Therefore, this study determined the effect of biopriming and nanopriming on germination percentage (GP), leaf water status (LWS), proline, malondialdehyde (MDA), hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂), and survial percentage (SP) of BG-4958 (Drought tolerant) and ICC-1882 (Drought sensitive) chickpea varieties exposed to polyethylene glycol (PEG) induced moderate (5 %) and severe drought (10 %) at flowering with no drought acting as a control. Experimental setup had three groups, control (untreated), bioprimed with plant growth promoting endophytic bacteria (PGPEB), and nanoprimed with CuNPs synthesised from PGPEB and their chemical counterparts). Crop analysis after 15 DDS (Days to drought stress) revealed that priming significantly altered the physio-biochemical parameters. Consortium and N2X led highest increment in GP and SP for DT and DS varieties, respectively, whereas N1X showed highest increase in LWS of both. Highest accumulation of proline was observed with consortium and N1 (X & Y) in DS variety while only biological CuNPs accumulated proline for DT variety. MDA and H₂O₂ decreased significantly in treated groups thereby reducing oxidative damage with non-significant variations in DT. Lower concentrations of biological CuNPs were found to be more effective in modulating the physio-biochemical machinery of chickpea under drought than their higher concentration as well as chemical counterparts. This study deepens our understanding of the beneficial role of PGPEB and biosynthesized CuNPs in alleviating the adverse effects of drought in chickpea.
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