Combined proteomics, metabolomics and physiological analyses of rice growth and grain yield with heavy nitrogen application before and after drought

BACKGROUND: Nitrogen application can effectively mitigate the damage to crop growth and yield caused by drought. However, the efficiency of heavy nitrogen application before drought (NBD) and heavy nitrogen application after drought (NAD) to regulate rice response to drought stress remains controversial. In this study, we profiled physiology, proteomics and metabolomics in rice variety Wufengyou 286 of two nitrogen management modes (NBD and NAD) to investigate their yield formation and the mechanism of nitrogen regulation for drought resistance. RESULTS: Results revealed that the yield of NBD and NAD decreased significantly when it was subjected to drought stress at the stage of young panicle differentiation, while the yield of NBD was 33.85 and 36.33% higher than that of NAD in 2017 and 2018, reaching significant levels. Under drought conditions, NBD increased chlorophyll content and net photosynthetic rate in leaves, significantly improved the activities of antioxidant enzymes such as superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase and catalase, and decreased malondialdehyde (MDA) content compared with NAD. NBD promoted nitrogen assimilation in leaves, which was characterized by increased activities of nitrate reductase (NR) and glutamine synthetase (GS). In addition, NBD significantly increased the contents of osmotic regulatory substances such as soluble sugar, soluble protein and free proline. Gene ontology and KEGG enrichment analysis of 234 differentially expressed proteins and 518 differential metabolites showed that different nitrogen management induced strong changes in photosynthesis pathway, energy metabolism pathway, nitrogen metabolism and oxidation-reduction pathways. CONCLUSION: Different nitrogen management methods have significant differences in drought resistance of rice. These results suggest that heavy nitrogen application before drought may be an important pathway to improve the yield and stress resistance of rice, and provide a new ecological perspective on nitrogen regulation in rice. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12870-020-02772-y.