Investigation of some mobil genetic elements (transposon) and physio-biochemical parameters associated with drought in Cucumis melo L.

Biotic and abiotic stress conditions cause significant crop losses in many plants and also adversely affect the human and animal nutrition. Drought is one of the most well-known abiotic stress conditions. When the available areas of the world are classified according to stress factors, drought stress accounts for the largest proportion with a share of 26%. The development of drought resistance mechanisms of plants is quite complex and takes a long time. Therefore, it is important to study some properties of plants such as molecular, biochemical, physiological and morphological under different environmental conditions. There are many factors affecting the drought resistance in the environment where the plants are grown. In this case, the development of drought resistant genotypes becomes quite difficult. In current study, firstly Tnt1, Tto1, Tos17, Tto5, BARE1, EARE-1, Reme1 and Ttd1a transposons were examined in melon plants under drought stress. Thus, these transposons whose functions in the plant genome are not yet known were studied for the first time in melon plants under the drought stress. In addition, the inter-species transferability of these transposon elements has been a separate aim of this study. However, the results of transposon gene expression were compared with some important physio-biochemical parameters and important literature knowledge that revealed to clarify the molecular-physiology aspect of drought mechanism in melon plant was gained. Keywords: Gene Expression, Glutathione, Melon, Drought, Chlorophyll, Transposon