• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.522-527
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• 2004

Barley growing in paddy fields often suffers from wet-injury due to oxygen deficiency in rhizospere caused by excessive water in the soil. This study was conducted to investigate responsiveness of growth, development and anaerobic glycolysis enzymes to acute hypoxia in barley seedlings. Barley seedlings at the third leaf stage were subjected to hypoxia (1 ppm dissolved oxygen) by sparging the culture solution with nitrogen gas for up to seven days. Length and fresh weights of the shoot and root were affected little by hypoxia for up to 5 days. But root dry weight was slightly decreased by hypoxia for 7 days. In the root, alcohol dehydrogenase and lactate dehydrogenase activities increased drastically under hypoxia, reaching at their maximum levels in 3 to 5 days of hypoxia and decreasing slightly thereafter. However, the activities of both enzymes changed little in the shoot. Increases of their activities in the root were contributed by all the isozymes found in barley. These results suggest that barley seedlings first adapt to hypoxia by rapidly activating fermentative glycolysis to stabilize cellular pH and to increase energy production for the following morphological adaptative changes.