Metabolic Responses of Two Contrasting Lentil Genotypes to PEG-Induced Drought Stress

Among abiotic stresses, drought is undoubtedly one of the most severe environmental factors for a wide range major crops, leading to considerable yield and economic losses. The adverse effects in crop reflect result series morphological physiological changes but also signaling pathways, transcriptional post-transcriptional regulation stress-responsive genes, metabolic adaptations. Despite exhausting studies elucidating plants’ response drought, there knowledge gap biochemical mechanisms governing tolerance lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.). present study aimed determine fluctuations metabolite profiles genotypes with contrasting discover possible biomarkers screening tolerant at early growth stages. Lentil seedlings were subjected osmotic stress, induced by polyethylene glycol, two stress levels (2.5% 5.0% PEG-6000) period 20 days, while untreated plants included as controls. GC/ΕΙ/MS-mediated profiling was employed monitor stress. data OPLS-DA OPLS-HCA discrimination between treatments discovery trends corresponding biomarkers. In total, analysis yielded 150 features highly reproducible patterns, which vast majority belonged carbohydrates, carboxylic acids, amino acids. Overall, findings highlight differential accumulation compounds, more importantly, variable certain metabolites, namely D-fructose, α,α-trehalose, myo-inositol, L-tryptophan, genotypes, indicating that adaptive responses operate under strong genotypic dependency lentil. Research provide insights into various aspects lentil’s metabolism further offer possibility applying such towards effectively drought-tolerant germplasm