Contrasting Changes Caused by Drought and Submergence Stresses in Bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon)

In this study, we investigated the mechanisms by which bermudagrass withstands the drought and submergence stresses through physiological, proteomic and metabolomic approaches. The results showed that significant physiological changes were observed after drought treatment, while only slight changes after submergence treatment, including compatible solute contents, ROS levels and antioxidant enzyme activities. Proteomics results showed that 81 proteins regulated by drought or submergence treatment were identified by MALDI-TOF-MS. Among them, 76 proteins were modulated by drought stress with 46 increased abundance and 30 decreased abundance. Forty-five showed abundance changes after submergence treatment with 10 increased and 35 decreased. Pathway enrichment analysis revealed that pathways of amino acid metabolism and mitochondrial electron transport/ATP synthesis were only enriched by drought treatment, while other pathways including photosynthesis, biodegradation of xenobiotics, oxidative pentose phosphate, glycolysis and redox were commonly over-represented after both drought and submergence treatments. Metabolomic analysis indicated that most of the metabolites were up-regulated by drought stress, while 34 of 40 metabolites contents exhibited down-regulation or no significant changes when exposed to submergence stress, including sugars and sugar alcohols. These data indicated that drought stress extensively promoted photosynthesis and redox metabolisms while submergence stress caused declined metabolisms and dormancy in Cynodon dactylon. Taken together, the quiescence strategy with retarded growth might allow bermudagrass to be adaptive to long-term submerged environment, while activation of photosynthesis and redox, and accumulation of compatible solutes and molecular chaperones increased bermudagrass tolerance to drought stress.