The Effect of Methyl Jasmonate on Some Physiological and Biochemical Characteristics of Strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa cv. Paros) under drought stress

Methyl jasmonate is a new plant growth regulator that plays an important role in increasing plant resistance to environmental stresses, including drought stress. To investigate the effect of methyl jasmonate on strawberry cv. Paros under drought stress in greenhouse of Maragheh agricultural college was conducted in 2016. This experiment was conducted in a factorial randomized complete block design. The parameters included fruit set percentage, number of flowers and fruits, relative water content, chlorophyll a, b, and carotenoids, soluble carbohydrates, proline, anthocyanins and catalase enzyme. The results showed that irrigation and methyl jasmonate treatments alone and had a significant effect on all parameters at 5% level. The highest percentage of fruit set (95.2%), number of flowers (31.25%) and fruits (20.13%), yield (125.2 g), relative water content (90.64%), chlorophyll a (1.32 mg.g-1), b (0.77 mg.g-1) and carotenoids (2.02 mg.g-1), and the lowest amount of soluble carbohydrates (18.7 mg.g-1), proline (1.4 μM.g-1), anthocyanins (0.65 ABS at 530 nm), catalase enzyme (0.1 mmol.g-1), and superoxide dismutase (0.28 mmol.g-1) were observed under conditions without drought stress. Also, the use of methyl jasmonate improved all characters under drought stress conditions, which had a greater effect at 100 μM concentration. According to the results, application of methyl jasmonate can be proposed to improve plant growth under drought conditions.