ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Abiotic Stress
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1673580
Leaf ionome signatures as drought tolerance indicators in Chilli
Provisionally accepted
- 1Dr. YSR Horticulture University, West Godavari, India
- 2Central University of Tamilnadu, Thiruvarur, India
- 3Sikkim University, Gangtok, India
- 4ICAR –IARI, Rice Breeding & Genetics Research Center, Aduthurai, India
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The Chilli (Capsicum annuum L.) cultivation is confined to warm and semi-arid regions where irrigation availability is often limiting the production. Drought is one of the constraints of chilli cultivation. Hence, the development of drought-tolerant varieties is increasingly essential, and efforts are directed towards developing methods to understand chilli plant responses to water deficit. In this context, we used ionomics to study the drought tolerance of chilli. The ionome profiling of leaves using the ICP-MS and integrating it with morpho-physiological and biochemical characters of eight cultivars using principal component, and correlation analysis revealed the signature ionome mediating the varying level of drought tolerance. Accumulation of Ca, Cu, Mg, Fe, Mn, Mo, Ni and Sn ions in leaves indicated them as markers for drought tolerance in chilli. This is a major step towards identification of drought tolerant cultivars using simple and efficient technique in chilli. This method can serve as simple, modern high throughput tool in pre-breeding for selecting the drought tolerant genotypes in crop improvement programmes.
Keywords: Chilli, drought, Leaf ionome, PEG, Hydroponics, Mineral nutrition, Climatechange, water scarcity
Received: 26 Jul 2025; Accepted: 20 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Venkata Ramana, Subramanian, Sujata and Palaniyandi. 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: Manivannan Subramanian, smanivannanprof@gmail.com
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