Acetic acid positively modulates proline metabolism for mitigating PEG-mediated drought stress in Maize and Arabidopsis

Introduction Osmotic imbalance is one of the major consequences drought stress, negatively affecting plant growth and productivity. Acetic acid has modulatory roles in osmotic balance plants; however, mechanistic insights into acetic acid-mediated adjustment under stress remains largely unknown. Methods Here, we investigated how seed priming seedling root treatment with enabled maize plants overcoming polyethylene glycol (PEG)-induced effects. Results Maize seeds primed showed better performance when compared unprimed PEG application. This was mainly attributed to improved traits, such as fresh weight, dry length shoots roots, several leaf spectral indices, including normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) chlorophyll absorption reflectance (MCARI). The levels oxidative indicators hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O ) malondialdehyde (MDA) did not alter significantly among treatments, but proline content well expression biosynthetic gene, Δ1-PYRROLINE-5-CARBOXYLATE SYNTHETASE 1 ( P5CS1 elevated receiving PEG-treatments. On other hand, treating seedlings led a significant recovery from drought-induced wilting. Although traits remained unchanged enhancement water content, photosynthetic rate, level, , antioxidant enzyme activities along reduced level H MDA acid-supplemented indicated positive regulatory role tolerance drought. Moreover, high subsequent elevation upon application were further validated using wild type mutant p5cs1 Arabidopsis. that maintain phenotypic appearance than plants, suggesting crosstalk between metabolism stress. Discussion Our results highlight molecular intrinsic mechanisms conferring