Drought on crop production

•Water relations: Drought alters the water status by its influence on absorption, translocation and
transpiration. The lag in absorption behind transpiration results in loss of turgor as a result of increase in the
atmospheric dryness.
• Photosynthesis: Photosynthesis is reduced by moisture stress due to reduction in photosynthetic rate,
chlorophyll content, leaf area and increase in assimilates saturation in leaves (due to lack of translocation).
• Respiration: Respiration increases with mild drought but more severe drought lowers water content and
respiration.
• Anatomical changes: Decrease in size of the cells and intercellular spaces, thicker cell wall and greater
development of mechanical tissue are the anatomical changes. Stomata per unit leaf tend to increase.
• Metabolic reaction: Almost, all metabolic reactions are affected by water deficits.
• Hormonal relationships altered: The activity of growth promoting hormones like cytokinin, gibberlic acid
and indole acetic acid decreases and growth regulating hormone like abscisic acid, ethylene etc. increases.
• Nutrition: The fixation, uptake and assimilation of N is affected. Since dry matter production is considerably
reduced, the uptake of NPK is reduced.
• Growth and Development: Drought results in decrease in growth of leaves, stems and fruits. Maturity is
delayed if drought occurs before flowering, while it advances if drought occurs after flowering.
• Reproduction and grain growth: Drought at flowering and grain development determines the number of
fruits and individual grain weight, respectively. Panicle initiation in cereals is critical while drought at anthesis
may lead to drying of pollen. Drought at grain development reduces yield while vegetative and grain-filling
stages are less sensitive to moisture stress.
• Yield: The effect on yield depends on what proportion of the total dry matter is considered as useful
material to be harvested. If it is aerial and underground parts, effect of drought is as sensitive as total
growth. When the yield consists of seeds as in cereals, moisture stress at flowering is detrimental. When the
yield is fibre or chemicals where economic product is a small fraction of total dry matter, moderate stress on
growth does not have adverse effect on yields.
 Crop Adaptations under drought
Crops survive and grow under moisture stress mainly by two ways:
1.Escaping drought and
2. Drought Resistance

Adaptation to Moisture Stress

1.Escaping drought 2.Drought resistance

1.Drought Avoidance 2.Drought Tolerance

1.Mitigating stress 2.High Tolera

1.Conserving water 2.Improving Water

(Water Savers) Uptake(Water Spenders)

Figure: Flow chart showing different mechanism for overcoming moisture stress
 ESCAPING DROUGHT

Evading the drought is the simplest means of adaptation of plants to dry conditions.
Many desert plants the so called Ephimerals, germinate at the beginning of the rainy season and have
extremely short life period of 5-6 weeks, which is confined to the rainy season and are not drought
resistance.
Germinators inhibitors serve as safety mechanism and no other mechanism is there.
In crops , a very few varieties of crops are ephimerals.0For example: certain vars of pearlmillet mature within
60 days. Short duration pulses like cowpea, green gram and blackgram can be included in this category.
However, short duration vars have less yield.

DROUGHT TOLERANCE: These plants have got different mechanisms for tolerating moisture stress but may
or may not have yield reduction.
 Table: Mechanisms of drought Resistance and their Influence on yield
S.No. Mechanism Yield reduced
1. DROUGHT ESCAPE
a. Rapid phenological development No
b. Development plasticity No
2. DROUGHT AVOIDANCE
a. Conserving water
Increase in stomatal and cuticular resistance Yes
Reduction in radiation absoved Yes
Reduction in leaf area Yes
b. Improving Water uptake
Efficient Root system No
Increased liquid phase conductance No

3. Tolerating Stress
Maintenance of turgor No
 Avoiding Stress
Stress avoidance is the ability to maintain a favourable water balance and turgidity even when exposed to
drought conditions., thereby avoiding stress and its consequences.
A favourable water balance can be achieved either by :
1. Conserving water by restricting transpiration as soon as stress is experienced or
2. Accelerating water uptake sufficiently so as to replenish the lost water
Mechanism to Conserve Water:
1. Stomatal mechanism: Drought resistant varieties are capable of regulating Stomatal mechanism and
close stomata when drought prevails. Stoma remain open in the morning time when moisture stress
is minimum and perform photosynthesis
2. Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency: C4 plants have high photosynthetic efficiency due to high affinity
by phosphoenol pyruvic acid caboxylase enzyme and can perform better photosynthesis than C3
plants even when stomata are very little opened and therefore C4 plants like Sorghum, pearlmillet,
maize and sugarcane etc.are called as drought resistant. These plants can photosynthesize when
CO2 concentration is 100 ppm where as C3 plants Photosynthesis at 50-100 ppm.
3. CAM plants like pineapple and agave, sissal etc. are highly drought resistant and take up CO2 during
night and store it as organic acid and during day stomata are closed, this stored organic acid in
leaves is utilized and photosynthesis takes place.
4. Lipid deposits on leaves: Plants like sorghum and soybean deposit waxy substances on their leaves
surfaces under stress conditions.
5. Reduction in leaf area: Water deficit reduce tillering or branching which in turn reduce reduce the leaf
area resulting in less transpiration. The individual leaf size also reduces as leaf expansion is very
sensitive to moisture stress.
6. In grasses, leaves roll or curl due to stress and thus reduce the area exposed to solar radiation
resulting in low transpiration. Leguminous plants show parahelionastic movements i.e. leaves are
oriented parallel to sun rays thus avoiding load of solar radiation. The leaflets are horizontal to sun
rays during morning and evening. However, in peak sun leaves get folded reducing transpiration. E.g.
Ground nut plant fold leaves and reduce solar radiation load by 60-70% by mid day. Leaf senescence
of lower leaves or drooping are other mechanisms against stress in plants
7.Leaf Surface: Leaves with thick cuticle, waxy surface and spines are common and effective morphological
characteristics to reduce transpiration. Pubescence increases leaf reflectance and reduce solar radiation and
incidence.
8.Effect of Awns: Awned vars. under drought give more yield compared to awnless. Awns contribute more (
about 12%) photosynthates to grains comparatively with less photosynthesizing area.
9.Water Storage in Plants: Water stored in plants is considered as an adaptive mechanism. However, its
significance is small in crop plants because their total water content is frequently less than the water they
transpire in a day.. Transpiration of 5 mm per day is common which is equivalent to 50 tonnes per ha. The
leaves so water storage in pine apple under drought may be an useful mechanism as its water requirement is
very low.
MECHANISM to IMPROVE WATER UPTAKE:
Efficient Root System: Deep, well branched and rapidly growing root system helps in absorbing more
moisture by exploiting higher volume of soil. Variation in root length between vars is related to differences in
drought resistance.
Root Shoot Ratio: If roots are more compared to transpiring shoots, water balance can be maintained.
Seedling establishment is particularly important in semiarid regions and root growth takes precedence over
shoot during this stage.. Drought increases root growth and root shoot ration which is important mechanism
of drought avoidance. By improving water uptake, high water potential is maintained in leaves and rate of
photosynthesis is not reduced. However, root growth is at the cost of shoot growth.
Increase in Liquid Phase conductance: Lowering of resistance to conductance of water can be achieved by
increasing either diameter of xylem vessels or their number., which is important to maintain high water
potential in plants..
Osmotic Adjustments: Stress induced breakdown of carbohydrates and proteins increase the concentration
of solutes in the cell sap resulting in reduction of osmotic potential.. Plants which are capable of lowering
their osmotic potential in response to slowly developing stress are useful. Leaves, hypocotyl, roots and
spikelets are shown to adjust osmotically in some species. It helps the plants to maintain their turgor as
It helps the plants to maintain leaf expansion and photosynthesis at levels of stress which is otherwise not
possible. Due to continued turgor, root growth continues even under moisture stress resulting in absorption of
more water and helps in exploration of greater soil volume. Osmotic adjustments increases translocation and
helps in increasing yield. Abscisic acid produced in the leaves at lower turgor reduces seed set through its effec
on pollen viability.. By osmotic adjustment production of AA is reduced. However, at low osmotic potential,
photosynthetic activity and rate of hypocotyl extension are reduced due to inhibition of enzymatic activity.
Plants that adjust osmotically must be able to withstand low water potential and water contents without
damage to tissues. There is wide variation in the degree of desiccation that plants can tolerate without cellular
injury.
DROUGHT TOLERANCE: In drought tolerance water potential of plant is reduced and its adverse effects are felt
Drought tolerance can be defined as tolerance of plants to a level of stress at which 50% of the cells die. The
performance of higher plants depend on the integrated function of many cells which is disturbed by drought.
Drought tolerance is either by mitigating stress or by showing high degree of tolerance.
Mitigating Stress: By resisting dehydration and by maintaining higher osmotic potential by accumulating highe
amount of solutes are the simplest way of mitigation of stress. The leaves with thick cuticles resist cell collapse
Thus by maintaining the turgor. these plants avoid secondary drought induced stress caused by dehydration.
These drought affected plants behave in two ways for mitigating drought:
Resistance to Dehydration: The morphological adaptations of drought affected plants help in accumulation of
sufficient solutes which help in maintaining a higher cell turgor pressure that prevents dangerous internal
desiccation and the plasma itself becomes more drought enduring.
Prevention of leaf collapse: The drought induced morphological adaptations like thick cell wall, sunken stomata
lipid or waxy coating over leaves ,presence of spines prevent wilting or cell collapse by reducing the
transpiration loss of water. With further loss of moisture, period of stomatal opening is regulated and other
morphological adaptations become operative and leaf collapse is avoided.
High Degree of Tolerance: The death of the plants can be avoided either by reducing metabolic strain or
plastic strain during drought. Adverse influence of drought on metabolism is known as metabolic strain.
Death of cells occurs either due to reduction in carbohydrate metabolism or protein metabolism. Under
severe drought, stomata are permanently closed resulting in cessation of photosynthesis and starvation of
plants. As a consequence of drought proteins are broken down into amino acids and the breakdown may
accumulate the products to a toxic level. In drought resistant plants, net loss of RNA is prevented and the
plants are capable of continuous protein synthesis and secondly more accumulation of proline checks the
protein breakdown. Young leaves are more resistant to drought than older ones due to more proteins.
Plastic strain indicates irrevocable loss of plant tissue due to severe stress. The mechanism is killing of
transpiring portion and keeping propagation material without desiccation. In many species, the above
ground parts die and underground plant parts like rhizomes, bulbs, tubers etc. remain alive but dormant
under severe drought.
Classification of plants as per their capability to Drought Resistance:
1.Ephimerals 2. Succulents 3. Drought Enduring
2. Succulents: They contribute a considerable proportion of the vegetation of most semi-arid regions and are
found in locally dry habitats e.g. Cactus family plants, euphorbiaceae, Liliaceae etc.Such plants are able to
survive dry periods because of relatively largereserves of water in the inner tissues of the fleshy stems or
fleshy leaves.
Drought Enduring:. The above two types are not true drought resistant as their cells can endure a severe
reduction in water content for an extended period of time without injury but drought enduring group can
only resist the drought injury. E.g. Cresote bush ( Lerrea tridentale) in semiarids
Factors affecting Drought Resistance:
Absorption of Water by plants from soil:
1.Soil Factors:Available moisture content, conc. of soil soln.,Toxic substances in soil, soil temperature, soil
aeration
2..Root Developments: Spread and depth, root branching, No. of root hairs per unit root length
3. Physiological Adaptations like: Osmotic pressure of cell sap of roots; Inhibition pressure of Hydrophilic
colloid of roots, Mucilaginous secretion of roots
Factors related to Transpiration:
1. Atmospheric conditions : Temp, Humidity, Air movement, Light intensity
2. Structural Features as: Root to shoot ratio, conductance tissue, reduction of leaf surface. Folding or
rolling of leaves, sunken stomata, pubescence etc.
3. Physiological Adaptations like: Size of cells, Bound water content, Osmotic pressure of cell sap and sugar
content in plants
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