Abstract
Nitrogen is an important nutrient for the successful metabolism of plants, but its occurrence in soil is always very limited. This nutrient has a significant role to preserve plants during various stress conditions by altering the production rate of phytochemicals as defense weapons. Hence, this study was carried out to analyze the effect of nitrogen supply on the phytochemical composition and relative water content in Jatropha curcas L. under a simulated drought condition. The selected seedlings were grown from stem cuttings and categorized into different treated three groups along with the control. After the completion of the experiment, the growth pattern and phytochemical production were investigated. An increased malondialdehyde activity (MDA) was reported with a reduction in relative water content (RWC) of the leaf and in the biomass of seedlings under drought stress. A significant decrease in the levels of alkaloids, phenol, flavonoids and tannins with an increase in saponins and terpenoids was also observed in only simulated drought stressed plants. While a significant increase in the levels of total alkaloid, tannins, flavonoids and phenols was observed in those plants where exogenous nitrogen was supplied before the start of drought periods, unlike in treated and control plants. Therefore, it was revealed that application of Nitrogen enabled the plants to possess protective mechanism through the production of phytochemicals that facilitate the cell membrane to reduce the detrimental effects caused by drought stress.
Highlights
Plants are sessile in nature and have adapted well to various stress conditions
In the case of plants under drought stress, the biomass value was 2.9±0.15 g whereas, a comparatively higher value of 4±0.1 g was recorded for plants under drought with nitrogen supplementation (Fig. 1A)
In case of relative water content (RWC) the obtained values represents similar trend, i.e., plants of group C, N and Nitrogen and drought (N+D) showed RWC values as 85%, 90% and 73% respectively, that were significantly higher than RWC of plants (54%) which were exposed to drought
Summary
Plants are sessile in nature and have adapted well to various stress conditions. The abiotic factor drought is one of the detrimental stresses which limit crop yield worldwide. Oxidative stress occurs which leads to the development of reactive oxygen species (ROS) such as alkoxy radicals (RO), catalase (CAT), gluthatione reductase (GR) and ascorbate peroxidase (APX) [3,4]. Amides, amino acids, proteins, DNA, RNA, chemicals, nutrients, hormones and numerous other cell complexes contain nitrogen as one of there components. It isn't overstating to affirm that Nitrogen is the key component for metabolism and is the most critical ingredient of proteins and nucleic acids. All living organisms are in an ocean of environmental nitrogen (78%), yet miserably not all life forms are supplied with the possibility to use this copiously accessible subatomic N2 reasonably. The vast majority of plants are able to utilize different types of nitrogen without difficulty [5]
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