Morphological, physiological and antioxidant response of Stevia rebaudiana under in vitro agar induced drought stress
Soheila Lahijanian, Morteza Eskandari, Ghasem Akhbarfar, Iraj Azizi, Marziyeh Afazel, Cyrus Ghobadi
Abstract
In this investigation, the response of Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni was studied in different in vitro drought conditions. A method based on agar concentration in different levels (6, 8, 10, 12, 14 gl-1) was used to induce some drought stress levels. Agar concentrations can make a meaningful difference in biochemical, physiological, and antioxidant responses of the Stevia. Under the stress condition, the highest accumulation of proline content (50%) and malondialdehyde (MDA) (42%) were recorded in the highest concentration of agar. Moreover, antioxidant enzyme activities, ascorbate peroxidase (17%), catalase (53%), and peroxidase (30%) have been drastically enhanced from 8 gl-1 agar. Current results indicated that using agar as a water stress agent could be effectively exploited as an efficient method in modeling the in vitro drought stress in Stevia rebaudiana.