Comprehensive Evaluation and Construction of Drought Resistance Index System in Hulless Barley Seedlings.

Abstract

With global climate change ongoing, the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events have increased annually. Hulless barley ( Hordeum vulgare L. var. nudum), a primary crop cultivated in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau mountains, frequently encounters multiple abiotic stresses including low temperature, high salinity, and drought. Among these stresses, drought has emerged as a critical environmental constraint affecting sustainable agricultural development worldwide. Establishing a drought resistance evaluation system for the hulless barley germplasm during its seedling stages could provide a theoretical foundation for screening and breeding drought-tolerant cultivars to address climate change challenges. This study employed two drought-sensitive (YC85 and YC88) and two drought-tolerant (ZY1252 and ZY1100) cultivars to develop an effective drought resistance evaluation protocol for hulless barley. Our findings identified several reliable indicators for assessing drought tolerance at the seedling stage: fresh mass, chlorophyll fluorescence parameters (F v /F m , NPQ, and R FD ), photosynthetic parameters (E and gsw), and reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels. The established evaluation system was subsequently applied to three uncharacterized cultivars (ZY673, ZY1403, and KL14). The results classified all three as drought-sensitive, with ZY1403 exhibiting the highest sensitivity. Our work has established a comprehensive drought resistance evaluation framework for Tibetan hulless barley. Furthermore, this study provides valuable insights for optimizing cultivation practices and water resource management strategies, offering theoretical guidance for agricultural adaptation to climate change.

Plant phenotyping relevance

幼苗の乾 drought resistance を評価するための指標選定・評価プロトコルと総合評価枠組みを開発し、別品種で適用しているため、表現型取得・評価法が研究の中心である。

Code and data availability

The paper reports PEG-simulated drought phenotyping of hulless barley seedlings (fresh/dry mass, gas exchange, chlorophyll fluorescence, DAB/NBT ROS staining), but no public phenotype dataset, image repository, analysis code, or trained model is deposited. The Data Availability Statement states data are only in the文章,

No evidence-backed public reproduction asset is currently recorded.