Pot Level Drought Stress Tolerance Assay in Tobacco through Plant Phenotyping and Antioxidant Assay

Abstract

Drought is an important abiotic factor which has a huge detrimental impact on crop productivity. Study of plant responses towards drought stress and investigating the mechanism of drought tolerance is crucial for achieving the target of developing drought-tolerant plants. Phenotyping is a cost effective approach which can be adopted to evaluate the severity of drought stress in a plant. Next to phenotyping parameters, biochemical parameters such as the study of antioxidant enzyme activity play significant roles in assessing the extent of drought stress caused injury in a plant. Among the antioxidant enzymes, ascorbate peroxidase is an enzyme which plays a crucial role in drought tolerance in plants. It has been well established that the activity of this enzyme increases under drought stress. Here, we present a simple and reproducible protocol to investigate the response of tobacco plants towards drought stress through measurement of phenotypic parameters and antioxidant enzyme activity. Though, these experiments have been conducted with tobacco plants, this protocol could be adopted for other crop species.