CADAVERINE: A POTENT MODULATOR OF PLANTS AGAINST ABIOTIC STRESSES

Abstract

Environmental stresses are a major threat for agricultural productivity. But certain biotic and abiotic stresses like salinity and heavy metals, especially cadmium and lead are the main cause of soil degradation and inhibit germination, speed of germination, dry mass accumulation, photosynthetic pigments due to perturbed physiochemical processes resulting decline in growth and related metabolites. Salinity possesses a negative impact on plant growth as it causes plant intoxication and osmotic stress which interferes with the crop development. While heavy metals inhibit nitrate reductase activity and decrease organic nitrogen and protein contents. Their higher concentrations can severely distress the growth of plant and biomass yield. The dynamic approaches of PA's are demonstrated in all the disciplines like plant sciences, human health and microbiology. Despite their important contributions in research, still some areas remain least explored like the action of polyamines in plant stress physiology and its future practical applications. Cadaverine (Cad), a structurally different diamine which has an independent biosynthetic pathway also comes under the family of polyamines. It improves crop salt tolerance; improvise heavy metal stress, acts as a plant growth regulator that further activates antioxidant defense system and it intensely upholds the stressed plant growth through preserving the metabolites.