ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Responses of Zea mays L. Cultivars to PEG induced Drought Stress

Water deficit stress is one major environmental constraint having a devastating impact on crop productivity. Improving plant tolerance to drought is imperative to ensure food security. Drought stress during maize seedling establishment stage lowers the seedling survival rate and increases post pollination embryo abortion rate. Thus, an experiment was carried out as factorial in randomized complete design with three replicates to evaluate the tolerance mechanism of five local maize cultivars at Department of Life Sciences (Botany), Manipur University, Manipur during February to April, 2022. The maize seeds were allowed to germinate under control environment conditions: 14h light/10h dark, 25±2^oC temperature and 60% relative humidity using a growth chamber (Tanco PLT-149 Plant Growth Chamber). At seven days after emergence, different concentrations of PEG-6000 were used to impose water deficit stress to maize seedlings. It was observed that drought stress substantially inhibited growth and development across all cultivars. Relative water content (RWC) as well as chlorophyll pigment concentration showed gradual decline under different drought stress levels with cultivar M002 being the least affected. Drought stress also triggered significant augmentation of osmolytes and antioxidant activity with maximum accumulation in cultivar M002. Overall findings from this study indicate that cultivar M002 possess promising drought tolerance characteristics and can perform successfully in water scarce regions.