Vol. 11, Issue 11 (2022)

Author(s):
Ankit, Gopal Kalwan, Gautham TP and Deepesh Kumar

Abstract:
Barley is the important winter season cereal grown in stress environments specifically with limited moisture and saline soils. It is well known that under stress conditions plants try to combat the impact by various means. The production of osmolytes, such as proline could be one of the main strategies in this direction. Thus, impact of copper were evaluated in barley on germination, growth and some biochemical parameters such as chlorophyll, carbohydrate and proline content at 0.5, 1, 5 and 10 mg CuSO₄.5H₂O/litre concentrations. We found that as the copper concentration increases it results in decreased germination percentage, root length and chlorophyll content but there was no significance change was observed in shoot height. As copper also affects chlorophyll synthesis pathway, we noticed inhibition of this pathway resulted in drastic reduction in carbohydrates content. With the increase in the heavy metal stress, plant accumulated proline to mitigate the impact of copper stress. Similarly Relative Water Content (RWC) shows positive correlation with heavy metal concentration. It was concluded that besides parameters like germination percentage, root length and chlorophyll content, the proline accumulation could be the best indicator to access the heavy metal stress in barley plant.