Glutathione Reducaste Activity Influenced by Drought in Maize Seedlings

In this study,it was found that drought treatment at 28?℃ for 4 days significantly decreased the survival percentage of two variety of maize seedlings compared with the control. this indicated that this drought stress caused injury which decreased longevity of these two varieties of maize seedlings. Glutathione Reducaste (GR , EC 1.6.4.2 )activity had been changed during this drought treatment, and the activity of GR displayed rise slightly in early stress stage then declined significantly following the prolonged stress duration in the two varieties of maize seedlings. Examination of soluble protein content in the enzyme extracts showed that the protein content decreased of two variety of maize seedlings during drought treatment,and this may imply that drought stress impeled degradation of protein. The results above suggested that antioxidant enzyme take part in the formation of drought tolerance at the first stage of drought stress,but the decrease of protein content results in the decrease of GR activity during the final stage of drought stress.