How and When Drought Water Stress Impacts Maize Growth and Development - Essay Example

How and when drought water stress impacts maize growth and development Introduction Drought water stress is more often caused by climatic changes in various areas. Drought water stress has a major impact on plant development and growth, hence the major cause of lower yields, prevents seedling establishment, proper root growth, and photosynthesis process is also affected as well as maize plant failure in the affected regions. The effect of drought water stress varies between plant species, for example some are able to stand the harsh weather and survive while others wilt and die. Though in some cases, early recognition of drought water stress symptoms in plants can be maintained critically to help the plant grow, the most common symptom of drought water stress in maize plants is wilting. As maize experience drought water stress, the water pressure inside the leaves decreases and plants wilt in the long run; wilting reduces growth of any plant. When drought water stress occurs, soil moisture level will be low while salinity will be high and hence maize plants need to use more energy to remove water from the soil due to the osmotic pressure, which affects cell division and cell growth, causing plants to wilt even more faster as they are required to use more energy to absorb the little amount of water available (Palmer & Friesen 61). Drought water decreases growth and development because of reduced photosynthesis that is; - stomata close, hence closing the pathway for water exchange, carbon dioxide and oxygen leading to a decrease in photosynthesis. Leaf growth is more affected than the root growth. Here is some of the mini-review from specific journals on how maize plants have been affected by drought water stress. Invited Review: maize is an organism that cannot move from one place to another, making it difficult to avoid adverse environmental conditions such as drought water stress. Drought water stress is a major threat to maize plant (Perez, Azuai & Pixiley, 105). According to Jewell, Waddington & Ransom 201, drought water stress is a climatic phenomenon that occurs periodically in all climatic zones in different regions causing physiological damage to plants in the environment. Due to this climatic changes, more frequent and prolonged drought events are expected in several parts of the world, leading to weaker crop yield especially the maize plant in more severe cases, food shortage. Despite the water deficiency which has already caused grave constraint to plants development and production, drought water stress also causes depletion of mineral resources which will occur as a secondary effect on the maize plant, that is nutrient transport from soil solution to the roots is dependent on soil moisture and nutrient transport from the roots to the shoot is also limited by drought water stress hence decreasing transpiration rate, imbalance in the active transport, and membrane permeability. All these factors acting together have serious impacts on plant growth and development. Drought water stress also affects maize plant physiological process. A better understanding on the impact of drought water stress on maize plant nutrition should be a useful tool to developing ways of overcoming this drought water stress impact on maize farming or irrigation. Thus, these reviews intend to show the aspect of drought water stress (Njoroge & Wafula 39). Invited mini-review: Drought water stress occur in semi-arid tropics that host most of poor and small holding farmers of the developing world. Global warming is as largely a consequence of continuous increase in the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere leading to unusual changes in global temperatures and rainfall patterns. This in turn is expected to decrease water availability (water scarcity) in the environment, affecting plant growth and metabolism. In this review we view maize plant response to elevated carbon dioxide level in terms of growth and yield components (kropff et al 78). Physiological process, biochemical and molecular changes. Increase in carbon dioxide emission will increase the crop efficiency and in photosynthesis, while stomata conductance will probably reduce at higher carbon dioxide concentration, reducing transpiration. High carbon dioxide is characterized in areas experiencing drought water stress, hence understanding carbon dioxide and its interaction with other climate variables is needed in order to predict the impact of climatic change on maize growth, development and food security in future (Gustavo & Otegul 34). Invited review: water use efficiency is an important component of drought resistance and breeding. Horticultural crops consume more water than grain crops like maize and hence are susceptible to reduced water availability both in terms of yields and quality as well. Management techniques are playing an important role in enhancing water use in both horticulture and grain crop. This review is about selection of genotypes with high biomass potential and high water use efficiency under drought water stress environment (Witcombe, 51). Invited review: Drought water stress causes increase in high levels of sodium chloride which results to osmotic stress and creates ion toxicity due to high accumulation of the sodium chloride salt. The salt accumulation affects nutritional homeostasis of minerals such as calcium and potassium. The large detrimental effects of salinity on agriculture requires an understanding of the underlying genes and mechanism to improve crop tolerance. A large number of potentially important genes have been identified using forward and reverse genetics. This review gives an overview of membrane transporter that has been assigned to function as uptake and translocation of sodium and chloride (Suhus, Rockstorm & Osweis 213). Invited Review: In most parts of India, especially the western regions where there is low annual rainfall, its scarce distribution results in the widespread and recurring droughts of varying intensity and magnitude. The crops for example maize suffers from both moisture and nutrient stresses. As nutrient and water requirement are linked, investigations have established significant positive response of plants of these zones to improved soil fertility for example through fertilizer application, fertility-induced metabolic efficiency coupled with higher photosynthetic and nitrate activity. Thus, significant yield improvement can be obtained even under low soil moisture conditions through adequate nutrient management (Jenkins & Hasegawa 10). As Tuteja (45) suggests, drought water stress has caused deficiency of mineral nutrients in crops for example maize. The deficiency is due to depletion of minerals nutrients from the soil. This review studies the research on development of system of crop production that will supply adequate mineral nutrition even under the diverse effect of drought water stress. Conclusion In this study it was studied that maize seedling adapted to low water potential. By making walls in the root further extensible, this is due to the expansion activities hence if drought water stress occurred in the seedling stage, it enhanced root growth and adaption of maize hybrid to drought stress on the cell division in the shoot. Drought water stress diminished photosynthesis and it was also found that grain growth during endosperm cell division was more sensitive to drought as compared to starch deposition in the seed. The research also found out that the greatest impact of drought water stress occurs during the four weeks around pollination, which is the most critical in determining yield potential .Leaf rolling, leaf loss, and short plant height appear during drought water stress. Leaf rolling is a characteristic displayed by a maize plant as a defense mechanism to help protect it from excessive moisture loss through transpiration, while lower leaf loss is usually caused by reduction in photosynthesis. References David c.Jewell.Waddington, S.R.Ransom Jk. Maize Research For Stress Environment. New York,USA: Mcmillan, 2000. Gustavo.A, Maria.E.Otegul. Physiological Buses For Maize Improvement. New york: mcmillan, 2000. K.Njoroge, B.Wafula. Developing Drought And Low N-Tolerant Maize. Nairobi: Agriculture Research Institute, 2002. M.J kropff, P.S. Teng,J.Boum,B.A.M.Bouma,J.wJone,H.H.Vanlear. System Approaches At The Field Level. Netherland: Kluwer Academic, 1997. Mathew.A.Jenkins, Paul.M.Hasegawa. Advances In Molecular Breeding. Netherland: Springer, 2002. Palmer, D.K Friesen And A.F.E. Intergrated Approach To Higher Maize Productivity In The New Milleneum. Nairobi: Kenya Agriculture Institute, 2002. Perez H. Zaidi, Muhammad Azuai, Kevin Pixiley. Maize for Asia. Indonesia: Hanoi,Vietnam, 2008. Suhus P.Wani, Johan Rockstorm And Theib Osweis. Reinfed Agriculture Unlocking The Potentia. London: PUB CAB International, 2009. Tuteja, Narenda. Improving Crop Resistant To Abiotic Stress. New Jersey: John Wiley And Son, 2012. Witcombe, JR. Breeding drought And Nitrogen Stress. New YORK: CIMMYT, 2008. Read More