Climate change is a major challenge to agricultural development and ensuring enough food for a growing world population. For this reason, many models have been proposed in the past that could help plants adapt to drought caused by climate change, but none are sufficient to solve this worldwide growing problem completely.
Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is among the most common and widely used crops worldwide. Improving wheat drought stress tolerance is a very challenging task, and more research is necessary, since many parts of the world depend on this crop for food and feed.
Our current work is focused on the influence of probiotic microorganisms in combination with calcium salts on the physiological and biochemical metabolic pathways that wheat uses when exposed to drought stress and on the analysis of gene expression levels that contribute to wheat drought tolerance.
The research was carried out in the laboratory, under controlled conditions, simulating a prolonged drought from 6 to 18 days. Seedlings were treated with different probiotics (Bacillus subtilis, Lactobacillus paracasei, and some yeast) separately and in combination with each other in 105 CFU/ml concentrations for seed priming, and later in the same concentration for seedling spraying. In total, 70 g/m2 CaCO3 or 10 g/m2 CaCl2 was added to the soil. Almost all tested compounds improved plant growth and had a positive effect on long-term drought resistance in winter wheat. Bacillus subtilis + CaCl2 had the greatest effect on maintaining the relative leaf water content (RWC) and growth parameters close to those of irrigated plants along with lower levels of drought-induced gene expression.
This study showed that using some probiotics in combination with calcium salts can activate the defense reactions of plants in response to drought.
