Polyamines and antioxidant defense system are associated with cold tolerance in centipedegrass

Abstract

Physiological responses to low temperature were analyzed in a chilling-tolerant centipedegrass (Eremochloa ophiuroides) accession, Shao Guan (SG), in comparison to the commercial cultivar, Common. Lower levels of ion leakage and higher chlorophyll (Chl) concentration were observed in SG than in Common during chilling stress. The maximum photochemical efficiency, the actual photosystem II (PSII) efficiency, photochemical quenching efficiency, and net photosynthetic rate were decreased during chilling stress in both genotypes, with higher levels of these parameters shown by SG than Common. In addition, higher activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), ascorbate-peroxidase (APX) and glutathione reductase (GR), and higher concentrations of ascorbic acid (AsA) and glutathione (GSH) were observed in SG than in Common. Moreover, higher concentrations of putrescine (Put), spermidine (Spd), and spermine (Spm) were observed in SG than in Common. Correlation analysis indicated that SOD, CAT, APX and GR activities, and AsA and GSH concentrations showed high correlation to Put, while APX, GR, and AsA concentrations were correlated to Spd. Exogenous Put or Spd increased antioxidant enzyme activities and chilling tolerance. The results suggested that polyamine-regulated antioxidants are important for chilling tolerance in centipedegrass and protect plants against chilling induced oxidative damage.

Keywords

antioxidants / centipedegrass / chilling / photosynthesis / polyamines

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Supplementary materials

The online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.15302/J-FASE-2017197 contains supplementary materials (Fig. S1; Fig. S2).ƒ

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31172253), Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (20114404110009), and the Guangdong Provincial Science and Technology Program (2007A05010040).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Jingjing Chen, Junyang Fang, Zhenfei Guo, and Shaoyun Lu declare they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

‚This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2018. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)