Abstract

Abiotic and biotic factors affect the survival, biomass production and crop yield. The main cereal crops as wheat, rice and maize get affected severely by drought stress. DREB/CBF binds to cis-acting elements responsive for drought stress. In the present work, the role of 18s rRNA and DREB1A gene in wheat plants treated with different elicitors at the time of sowing in response to drought stress has been studied. Specifically the expression of DREB1A and 18s rRNA genes in seeds of two wheat cultivars RAJ-4120 and RAJ-3765 pre-treated with different elicitors on 5th, 10th and 15th day of plant growth was investigated. The seeds of Triticum aestivum L. were treated with different elicitors viz., sodium nitro prusside (10 mM), salicylic acid (0.5 mM) and silver nitrate (10 mM) for 6 h before sowing. DREB1A gene expression in RAJ-4120 cultivar was significantly higher than RAJ-3765 cultivar. The results showed that DREB1A gene provided resistance against drought stress when treated with different elicitors in comparison to the seeds having no pre-sowing treatment. Among three elicitors, the highest DREB1A gene expression was noticed in SNP pre-treated seedlings during 15th day of stress. Hence, from the present study, it was concluded that DREB1A gene had role in delaying drought stress in T. aestivum L. and among three elicitors treated, SNP was found to be the best in which expression of DREB1A gene was found to be maximum.