Exogenous Proline and Moringa Leaf Extracts Improved Drought Resistance in Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Cultivars

Abstract

Moringa oleifera leaf extract (MLE) is rich in amino acids, ascorbate, zeatin, minerals, and many other compounds known for their growth-promoting potential, and proline has become a powerful osmolyte. Therefore, a pot experiment was aimed to study the effect of foliar spray with aqueous extracts of Moringa oleifera leaves (3%) and proline (25gL^-1) on some morphological, physiological, biochemical, and yield of five genotypes of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) grown under water stress. The results showed that the exogenous proline and moringa leaf extracts led to increased plant height, total plant fresh weight, total plant dry weight, flag leaf area, total chlorophyll content, relative water content, membrane stability, total phenolic content, antioxidant capacity by DPPH, total soluble sugar, proline content, spike length, spike weight, spiklet per spike, number of grains per spike, grains weight per spike, number of spike per pot, grain yield per pot, biological yield per pot, harvest index with the exception of electrolyte leakage under drought stress. These results demonstrated the importance of foliar application of proline and moringa as tolerance inducers of drought stress leading to improvements in physiological and biochemical attributes in plants grown under the adverse conditions of environmental stresses. According to the results of principal component analysis (PCA), there were significant contribution and strong correlation between studied traits responded by wheat genotypes especially Hasad and Rezan.