Hide
Show all
Email this article Morphological and physiological responses of some halophytes to salinity stress
Abstract
A pot experiment was conducted to examine whether the morphological and physiological characteristics of some halophytes may be affected by salt stress. For this purpose, a factorial experiment based on randomized complete block design was carried out with three replications. The treatments were some halophytes (Salicornia europaea, Atriplex leucoclada, and Kochia scoparia) and salinity stress levels [Electrical conductivity 0 (Hoagland’s solution), Hoagland’s solution consisting of 100, 200, 300 and 500 mM NaCl]. Among the halophytes tested, Salicornia europaea had significantly higher shoot and root of dry matters compared to the other halophytes in all salt treatments. Salinity stress resulted in an increase in photosynthetic pigments up to 200 mM and thereafter, it decreased in all of the studied plants. Photosynthetic pigments, ranked in a descending order, were high in Kochia scoparia, Salicornia europaea, and Atriplex leucoclada. In addition, salinity stress led to an enhancement in malondialdehyde (MDA) and H2O2. The tolerance of Salicornia europaea under high salinity stress was associated with low MDA and H2O2 contents as well as high contents of photosynthetic pigments. The shoot and root Na+ increased considerably by augmenting the salinity levels in all halophytic plants; however, there was a significant difference among halophytes at higher salinity levels. The shoot K+ decreased by increasing the salinity levels, but K+ partitioning pattern varied among the halophytes. Under saline conditions, the shoot and root Na+/K+ ratio of all halophytes grew. The highest and the lowest of Na+ were observed in Salicornia europaea and Kochia scoparia, respectively. Thus, the Na+/K+ ratio could be considered as an indicator of salt evaluation. Nitrogen, protein content, dry matter digestibility (DMD), and metabolizable energy (ME) were high in Salicornia europaea plants in comparison to other plants at 200–500 mM salinity levels; in contrast, acid detergent fiber (ADF) and netural detergent fiber (NDF) were low. According to the results of this study, the tolerance of halophytes towards NaCl is possibly due to the differences in damage from reactive oxygen species (ROS), especially H2O2, and toxicity to metabolism Na+.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
A.O.A.C. 1980. Official Methods of Analysis. 13th ed. Association of Official Analytical Chemists. Washington D.C. 376–384.
Ahmad P., Prasad M.N.V. 2011. Abiotic stress responses in plants: metabolism, productivity and sustainability. Springer Science & Business Media.
Aronson J.A., Whitehead E.E. 1989. HALOPH: a data base of salt tolerant plants of the world. Arid Land Studies, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
Ashour N. 1993. Presented at the Proc. IV. In International Conf. Desert Development.
Ashour N., Serag M., El-Haleem A.A. 1994. Domestication and biomass production of Kochia scoparia (L.) Roth as a fodder-producing halophyte under Egyptian conditions. J. Fac. Sci. UAE Univ, 8: 90–102.
Ashraf M. 2009. Biotechnological approach of improving plant salt tolerance using antioxidants as markers. Biotechnology advances, 27: 84–93.
Bartels D., Sunkar R. 2005. Drought and salt tolerance in plants. Critical reviews in plant sciences, 24: 23–58.
Benjamin R., Oren E., Katz E., Becker K. 1992. The apparent digestibility of Atriplex barclayana and its effect on nitrogen balance in sheep. Animal Production, 54: 259–264.
Cassman K.G., Whitney A. S., Fox R. L. 1981. Phosphorus requirements of soybean and cowpea as affected by mode of N nutrition. Agronomy Journal, 73: 17–22.
Dagar J. 1995. Characteristics of halophytic vegetation in India. Khan, MA and Ungar, IA: 255–276.
El-Hendawy S.E., Hu Y., Yakout G.M., Awad A.M., Hafiz S. E., Schmidhalter U. 2005. Evaluating salt tolerance of wheat genotypes using multiple parameters. European Journal of Agronomy, 22: 243–253.
Flowers T. 2004. Improving crop salt tolerance. Journal of Experimental Botany, 55:307-319.
Flowers T., Flowers S. 2005. Why does salinity pose such a difficult problem for plant breeders? Agricultural Water Management, 78: 15–24.
Flowers T., Yeo A. 1986. Ion relations of plants under drought and salinity. Functional Plant Biology, 13: 75–91.
Flowers T.J., Colmer T.D. 2008. Salinity tolerance in halophytes. New Phytologist, 179:945-963.
Gallagher J.L. 1985. Halophytic crops for cultivation at seawater salinity. Plant and Soil, 89: 323–336.
Gill S.S., Tuteja N. 2010. Reactive oxygen species and antioxidant machinery in abiotic stress tolerance in crop plants. Plant Physiology and Biochemistry, 48: 909–930.
Glenn E., O’leary J. 1985. Productivity and irrigation requirements of halophytes grown with seawater in the Sonoran Desert. Journal of Arid Environments, 17: 311–327.
Glenn E.P., Brown J.J., Blumwald E. 1999. Salt tolerance and crop potential of halophytes. Critical reviews in plant sciences, 18: 227–255.
Glenn E.P., O’leary J.W. 1984. Relationship between salt accumulation and water content of dicotyledonous halophytes. Plant, Cell & Environment, 7: 253–261.
Greenway H., Munns R. 1980. Mechanisms of salt tolerance in nonhalophytes. Annual Review of Plant Physiology, 31: 149–190.
Gupta B., Huang B. 2014. Mechanism of salinity tolerance in plants: physiological, biochemical, and molecular characterization. International Journal 1 of Genomics, 1–18.
Hajiboland R., Aliasgharzadeh N., Laiegh S.F., Poschenrieder C. 2010. Colonization with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi improves salinity tolerance of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) plants. Plant and Soil, 331: 313–327.
Heath R.L., Packer L. 1968. Photoperoxidation in isolated chloroplasts: I. Kinetics and stoichiometry of fatty acid peroxidation. Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 125:189–198.
Hoagland D.R., Arnon D.I. 1950. The water-culture method for growing plants without soil. Circular. California Agricultural Experiment Station, pp. 347.
Joshi R., Mangu V.R., Bedre R., Sanchez L., Pilcher W., Zandkarimi H., Baisakh N. 2015. Salt adaptation mechanisms of halophytes: improvement of salt tolerance in crop plants, p. 243–279, Elucidation of Abiotic Stress Signaling in Plants. Springer.
Khan M.A., Ungar I.A., Showalter A.M. 2000. Effects of salinity on growth, water relations and ion accumulation of the subtropical perennial halophyte, Atriplex griffithii var. stocksii. Annals of Botany, 85: 225–232.
Li J.-T., Qiu Z.-B., Zhang X.-W., Wang L.-S. 2011. Exogenous hydrogen peroxide can enhance tolerance of wheat seedlings to salt stress. Acta Physiologiae Plantarum, 33: 835–842.
Lichtenthaler H.K., Wellburn A.R. 1983. Determinations of total carotenoids and chlorophylls a and b of leaf extracts in different solvents. Biochemical Society Transactions, 11: 591–592.
Masters D., Norman H., Dynes R. 2001. Opportunities and limitations for animal production from saline land. Asian Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences, 14: 199–211.
Mohammadi H., Poustini K., Ahmadi A. 2008. Root nitrogen remobilization and ion status of two alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) cultivars in response to salinity stress. Journal of Agronomy and Crop Science, 194: 126–134.
Munns R. 1993. Physiological processes limiting plant growth in saline soils: some dogmas and hypotheses. Plant, Cell & Environment, 16: 15–24.
Naidoo J., Jahnke J., Von Willert D. 1995. Gas exchange responses of the C4 grass Sporobolus virginicus (Poaceae) to salinity stress. Biology of Salt Tolerant Plants, 121–130.
Oddy V., Robards G., Low S. 1983. Presented at the Feed information and animal production: proceedings of the second symposium of the International Network of Feed Information Centres/edited by GE Robards and RG Packham.
Santos C.V. 2004. Regulation of chlorophyll biosynthesis and degradation by salt stress in sunflower leaves. Scientia Horticulturae, 103: 93–99.
Szabolcs I. 1994. Soils and salinization. In: Pessarakli, M. (Ed.), Handbook of Plant and Crop Stress. Marcel Dekker, New York, pp. 3–11.
Taiz L., Zeiger E. 2010. Plant Physiology. 5th edition. Sinauer Associates Inc, Sunderland.
Velikova V., Yordanov I., Edreva A. 2000. Oxidative stress and some antioxidant systems in acid rain-treated bean plants: protective role of exogenous polyamines. Plant Science, 151:59–66.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/c.2015.70.2.31
Date of publication: 2016-10-20 11:11:19
Date of submission: 2016-10-19 08:47:53
Statistics
Indicators
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2016 Hamid Mohammadi, Javid Kardan
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.