STUDY OF POLYPEPTIDES INDUCED BY DROUGHT STRESS IN SOME LOCAL VARIETIES OF BARLEY FROM PAKISTAN

The response against drought stress amongst cultivars of barley is explained on the basis of SDS-PAGE and western blot. In this study, four varieties of barley were collected from National Agriculture Research Center (NARC), Islamabad, Pakistan for the analysis of protein profile under drought stress. Morphological studies revealed that the most affected traits were germination percentage, leaf area, number of roots & leaves and fresh weight of plant at different stress levels. In all, the highest number of proteins was produced in response to stress in Frontier-87 at 5 and 10% PEG concentration compared with the rest of treatments. Although no significant difference was observed at protein level in Sanober-96, however number of proteins was higher at 10 and 15% PEG concentration. Immunoblot analysis of the total protein extracted at the seedling stage clearly showed that all the varieties were drought tolerant.