Drought is one of the most important factors affecting plant growth and production due to ongoing global climate change. Elymus sibiricus has been widely applied for ecological restoration and reseeding of degraded grassland in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) because of its strong adaptability to barren, salted, and drought soils. To explore the mechanism of drought resistance in E. sibiricus, drought-tolerant and drought-sensitive genotypes of E. sibiricus were used in metabolomic studies under simulated long-term and short-term drought stress. A total of 1091 metabolites were detected, among which, 27 DMs were considered to be the key metabolites for drought resistance of E. sibiricus in weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA). Ten metabolites, including 3-amino-2-methylpropanoic acid, coniferin, R-aminobutyrate, and so on, and 12 metabolites, including L-Proline, L-histidine, N-acetylglycine, and so on, showed differential accumulation patterns under short-term and long-term drought stress, respectively, and thus, could be used as biomarkers for drought-tolerant and drought-sensitive E. sibiricus. In addition, different metabolic accumulation patterns and different drought response mechanisms were also found in drought-tolerant and drought-sensitive genotypes of E. sibiricus. Finally, we constructed metabolic pathways and metabolic patterns for the two genotypes. This metabolomic study on the drought stress response of E. sibiricus can provide resources and a reference for the breeding of new drought-tolerant cultivars of E. sibiricus.
Keywords: Elymus sibiricus; drought stress; flavonoids; metabolomics; proline.