ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Abiotic Stress
Growth Responses of Spring Barley to Varying Levels of Drought Priming
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- 2Karaj Islamic Azad University Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Tehran, Iran
- 3Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Drought-associated environmental changes pose a significant threat to global agricultural sustainability. While barley's response to single drought events across all growth stages is well-documented, its adaptations to recurrent drought-rehydration cycles during the vegetative stages remain unexplored. Barely plants were subjected to five glasshouse watering regimes and harvested at six sampling times (S1-S6): full irrigation (FI, 85% soil water-holding capacity, SWHC), and four drought treatments varying in severity (mild 65% vs. severe 45% SWHC) and pattern (intermittent ID1/ID2 with rehydration vs. persistent PD1/PD2 without). Results showed that persistent drought (PD1, PD2) consistently reduced interval-specific water-use efficiency (WUEn) across all stages, while intermittent drought (ID2) enhanced WUEn during tillering. Stomatal conductance (gs) was lowest in PD treatments, with PD1 exhibiting minimum values at seedling (S1) and jointing (S5), indicating severe transpiration limitation under prolonged stress. ID2 maintained higher gₛ than ID1 during seedling and tillering stages, notably at S2 and S3 where reduced and elevated WUEn, respectively, indicated a dynamic trade-off favoring carbon gain and water conservation, thereby promoting shoot/root recovery. However, cumulative severe stress ultimately impaired stomatal regulation in ID2, leading to ID1's superiority by jointing stage (S5–S6). Multivariate analysis identified stress severity as the primary initial driver of physiological disruption, revealed a fundamental shift to a biochemical stress-acclimation strategy in later stages, delineating a dynamic recovery response under ID from a conservative, high-cost strategy under PD. These findings suggest that applying more severe cyclic drought early (ID2, S1-S4) followed by milder cyclic stress later (ID1, S5-S6) optimizes stomatal function and productivity, enhancing resource-use efficiency under water limitation.
Keywords: water deficit, Hordeum vulgare L., recovery dynamics, Re-watering, vegetativedevelopment, Water use efficiency
Received: 30 Sep 2025; Accepted: 03 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Soghadi, Zandi, Wang and Kaul. 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: Hans-Peter Kaul
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.