Cross-Tolerance and Responses of Antioxidative Enzymes of Rice to Various Environmental Stresse

In order to examine the cross-tolerance of two chilling-tolerant cultivars (Donganbyeo and Heukhyangbyeo) and two chilling-susceptible cultivars (Hyangmibyeo and Taekbaekbyeo) to salt, paraquat, and drought, changes of physiological response and antioxidant enzymes were investigated. The seedlings were grown in a growth chamber until the 4-leaf stage. The seedlings were exposed to chilling at 5℃ for 3 days. For drought treatment, the seedlings were subjected to drought by withholding water from plants for 5 days. For paraquat study, plants were sprayed with 300 μM paraquat. For the salt stress, the seedlings were transferred to the Hoagland’s nutrient solution containing 0.6% (w/v) NaCl for 4 days. Chilling-tolerant cultivars showed cross-tolerant to other stresses, salt, paraquat, and drought in physiological parameters, such as leaf injury, chlorophyll a fluorescence, and lipid peroxidation. The baseline levels of antioxidative enzyme activities, catalase (CAT) and peroxidase (POX) activities in chilling-tolerant cultivars were higher than in the chilling-susceptible cultivars. However, there were no differences in ascorbate peroxidase (APX) and glutathione reductase (GR) activities between chilling- tolerant and -susceptible cultivars in untreated control. CAT activity in chilling-tolerant cultivrs was higher than that in chilling-susceptible cultivars during chilling, salt, and drought treatments, but not during paraquat treatment. However, other antioxidative enzymes, APX, POX, and GR activities showed no significant differences between chilling-tolerant and -susceptible cultivars during chilling, salt, paraquat, and drought treatments. Thus, it was assumed that CAT contribute to cross-tolerance mechanism of chilling, salt, and drought in rice plants.