Induced water stress influencing proline accumulation, protein profiles and dna polymorphism in chickpea cultivars

Five drought susceptible and five drought tolerant chickpea cultivars were evaluated for proline accumulation in addition to separation of stress responsive proteins by PAGE in relation to imposed water stress. The PCR based RAPD technique was employed to detect polymorphism in genomic DNA with eight random primers in each of the two drought susceptible and tolerant cultivars. Higher magnitude of proline accumulation was observed in the leaves of stressed plants of tolerant cultivars except in PG-5. In tolerant cultivars, an additional protein band of ~17.78 kD size was observed under water stress condition alongwith other protein bands of ~16.21, 36.30, 46.77 and 85.11 kD. The primers OPD-15 and OPC-09 detected polymorphism in genomic DNA of two tolerant and two susceptible cultivars.