An insight into drought resilience in three cohabiting mosses

Singh, Pragya; Božović, Djordje P.; Routray, Deepti; Backor, Martin; Sabovljević, Marko S.; Goga, Michal

doi:10.21608/ejbo.2025.345894.3129

An insight into drought resilience in three cohabiting mosses

Document Type : Regular issue (Original Article)

Authors

¹ Department of Plant Biology, Institute of Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Science, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Košice, Slovakia.

² Institute for Botany and Botanical Garden, Faculty of Biology, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.

³ Department of Plant Biology, Institute of Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Science, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Košice., Institute of Biotechnology, Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Science, Slovak University of Agriculture, Nitra, Slovakia.

⁴ Department of Plant Biology, Institute of Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Science, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Košice, Slovakia., Institute for Botany and Botanical Garden, Faculty of Biology, University of Belgrade, Belgrade., Center of Plant Biotechnology and Conservation (CPBC), Belgrade, Serbia.

⁵ Department of Plant Biology, Institute of Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Science, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Košice., Center for Interdisciplinary Biosciences, Technology and Innovation Park, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Jesenná 5, 041 54 Košice, Slovakia.

10.21608/ejbo.2025.345894.3129

Abstract

Drought stress is one of the critical abiotic stresses and it severely affects plant growth and development. Mosses, have an ability to pass in and out of physiological inactivity (anabiosis), which makes them a suitable plant group for drought stress studies. In this study, we investigated the differences in drought resistance among three phylogenetically distant but cohabiting moss species, namely Pleurozium schreberi, Polytrichum formosum and Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus under simulation of drought caused by PEG600, as inferred by the ion leakage, relative water content (RWC) and membrane stability as inferred by lipid peroxidation status. These parameters enable the understanding of the drought stress tolerance capacity and to determine drought resilience of the three selected moss species. Polytrichum formosum seems to tolerate the drought stress better than the other two mosses. It is also statistically supported that its membranes are less damaged, compared to other two tested species.

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