Nitric oxide confers cadmium tolerance in fragrant rice by modulating physio-biochemical processes, yield attributes, and grain quality traits.

Cadmium (Cd) stress causes serious disruptions in plant metabolism, physio-biochemical processes, crop yield, and quality characters. Nitric oxide (NO) improves the quality features and nutritional contents of fruit plants. However, how NO confers Cd toxicity in fragrant rice plants, is sparse. Hence, the present study investigated the effects of 50 µM NO donor sodium nitroprusside (SNP) on physio-biochemical processes, plant growth attributes, grain yield, and quality traits of fragrant rice under Cd stress (100 mg kg soil). The results revealed that Cd stress diminished rice plant growth, impaired photosynthetic apparatus and antioxidant defense system, and deteriorated the grain quality traits. However, foliar application of SNP mitigated Cd stress by improving plant growth and gas exchange attributes. Higher electrolyte leakage (EL) was accompanied with elevated levels of malondialdehyde (MDA) and hydrogen peroxide (HO) under Cd stress; however, exogenous application of SNP reduced them. The activities and relative expression levels of enzymatic antioxidants; superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD), catalase (CAT) and ascorbate peroxidase (APX) and non-enzymatic antioxidants, glutathione (GSH) contents were reduced by Cd stress, while SNP application regulated their activity and transcript abundances. SNP application improved fragrant rice grain yield and 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline content by 57.68 % and 75.54 % respectively, which is concomitant with higher biomass accumulation, photosynthetic efficiency, photosynthetic pigment contents, and an improved antioxidant defense system. Collectively, our results concluded that SNP application regulated the fragrant rice plant physio-biochemical processes, yield traits and grain quality characters under Cd-affected soil.