ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Physiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1630837
This article is part of the Research TopicPolyamines in Plant Stress Responses and DevelopmentView all 5 articles
Exploring regulatory roles of putrescine-doped zinc oxide nanoentities on ethylene signaling, redox imbalance, and programmed cell death in drought-stressed rice (Oryza sativa L.) seedlings
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Kalyani, Kalyani, India
- 2Agricultural Institute, HUN-REN Centre for Agricultural Research, Martonvásár 2462, Hungary
- 3University of Gour Banga, Malda, India
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We investigated the synergistic effects of putrescine-doped zinc oxide nanoparticles (PUT-nZnO) on drought-stressed rice seedlings. Our results demonstrate that PUT-nZnO enhances drought stress (DS) tolerance by improving redox balance, chloroplast integrity, and polyamine (PA) metabolism, offering a novel nano-biotechnological approach for crop resilience. Thus, 14-days old seedlings of rice (Oryza sativa L. cv. Swarna Sub1) were treated with PUT by foliar spray, singly and in combination of PUT-nZnO under 12%polyethyleneglycol-induced DS. The growth attributes, thermo-imaging, chloroplast ultrastructure, PA and ethylene signaling, relative cell death, redox metabolism and nuclear lysis were the major parameters attributed for stress mitigation. Initially, DS is scored with changes in relative water content by 48% under stress which was recovered by 126% under PUT-nZnO. Results demonstrated PUT-nZnO had direct impact on membrane integrity, reduction of DNA loss, restoration of ions by ATP-hydrolysis, regaining of cellular conformity and viability, oxidative signaling and antioxidation that reduced the DS injury.Oxidative stress under DS was mitigated for H2O2 (41%) by DS+PUT-nZnO treatments. The distribution of PAs and activity of PA oxidizing enzyme induced energy transfer mechanism within chloroplast and ROS generation to activate enzymatic pathways. The mechanism for DS tolerance is indicated by nZnO through securing osmotic turgidity and mineral nutrient support which is complemented by antioxidation capacity of PUT in a synergistic manner.This study discussed the promise for beneficiaries of combinational application by PUT and nZnO in most biocompatible manner to rescue the drought tolerance in rice at early growth stage.
Keywords: Drought stress, chloroplast, Endogenous polyamines, nanoparticle, Putrescine, rice
Received: 20 May 2025; Accepted: 25 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Das, Janda, Sil and Adak. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Tibor Janda, Agricultural Institute, HUN-REN Centre for Agricultural Research, Martonvásár 2462, Hungary
Malay Kumar Adak, University of Kalyani, Kalyani, India
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