Role of Mineral Nutrition in Alleviation of Drought Stress in Plants

Water, the most important component of life, is rapidly becoming a critically short commodity for humans and crop production. Limited water supply is one of the major abiotic factors that adversely affect agricultural crop production worldwide. Drought stress influences the normal physiology and growth of plants in many ways. It results in an increase of solute concentration outside the roots compared to the internal environment of the root and causes reverse osmosis. As a result, the cell membrane shrinks from the cell wall and may eventually lead to death of the cell. Water stress tends to shrink away from the interface with water-absorbing roots, creating a gap in the soil-plant-air continuum. As the plant continues to lose water via transpiration, water is drawn from root cells resulting in shrinkage of cell membranes and results in decreased integrity of the cell membrane and the living cell may be destroyed. Drought stress inhibits photosynthesis in plants by closing stomata and damaging the chlorophyll contents and photosynthetic apparatus. It disturbs the balance between the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the antioxidant defence, causing accumulation of ROS which induces oxidative stress to proteins, membrane lipids and other cellular component. Mineral elements have numerous functions in plants including maintaining charge balance, electron carriers, structural components, enzyme activation, and providing osmoticum for turgor and growth .In this paper, an overview of some macronutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and magnesium), micronutrients (Zinc, Boron, Copper) and silicon has been discussed in detail as how these nutrients play their role in decreasing the adverse effects of drought in crop plant.