Physiological and molecular characterization of ASR gene of pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.) Genotypes under drought stress condition

The present study envisaged the physiological and molecular characterization of ASR gene of pigeon pea genotypes under drought stress condition. All the 12 pigeon pea genotypes were subjected to physiological characterization under drought stress condition for identification of ASR gene in the field in three replications under control, 06 days, and 12 days conditions during summer 2023-24. The data from summer 2023-24 was subjected to statistical analysis. The Analysis of variance (ANOVA) for drought stress tolerance or resistance index was performed for all 12 genotypes using RBD analysis software. ANOVA showed non-significant genotypic differences for drought stress tolerance or resistance index and also between replication there was no significant difference for all 12 pigeon pea genotypes shown in the result of the RBD analysis. There was an unknowingly less is more in all the parameters measured from day 0–12 of drought stress in all the genotypes with control. Control plants maintained a higher protein content (leaf) (A), Fresh shoot weight (B), Fresh weight (C), Turgid weight (D), Dry weight (E), and Shoot dry matter content (F) in comparison to drought stressed plants. In the current study, the analysis of physiological responses demonstrated that ASR gene expression in drought stress and in control condition neither improve not reduced in water stress, which is helped to maintain studied physiological characters under water stress. A perusal of dendrogram indicated that an elucidian distance of 0.16 indicating that pigeon pea genotypes did not show much variation at DNA level and out of total 1775 amplicons polymorphism detected only 25.77% polymorphism with 9.61 average numbers of polymorphic bands. The designed primer(s) are perfect but not binding with the target and giving single sharp band on a DNA electrophoresis gel. It can be concluded that the parameters used for primer designing by Primer3 play a critical role in the experimental results and parameters defined in the present study resulting in a negative amplification during PCR of all 12 genotypes. Therefore, it was concluded that the 12 pigeon pea genotypes collected from ARS, Badnapur don’t show the amplification of ASR gene. According to the comparative analysis results of all genotypes belongs to drought susceptible.