Insight into the Biochemical Changes Induced in Brassica juncea (var. RLM619) on Application of Elicitors Alone and in Combinations

It has been widely explored that elicitors viz, benzothiadiazole (BTH), salicylic acid (SA) and ã-amino butyric acid (GABA) plays an important role in inducing defense mechanism in plants against dreaded diseases by eliciting the activity of various defense enzymes and increasing the amount of phenolics, chlorophyll and carotenoid content. In the present germination study we investigated the effect of these elicitors when applied alone and in various combinations. The results revealed increase in the activity of defense enzymes viz, peroxidase (PO), superoxide dismutase (SOD) as compared to control (water) in combinations or when they are applied alone. Among different treatments tried, maximum increase in the activity of PO and SOD was examined in the hypocotyls sampled from germinating seeds soaked with the combinations, C1 (3.3 ppm BTH +33.3 ppm SA) and C2 (6.6 ppm BTH + 16.6 ppm SA). The detailed study with one of these promising combination viz, C2 revealed that BTH in combination with SA was more effective in eliciting the defense enzymes activity, phenolics, total chlorophyll and carotenoid content than that of BTH tried alone (6.6 ppm BTH) on all days of observation (3^rd, 5^th and 7^th DAG).