Abstract
Strawberry explants cv. Queen Elisa were cultured under in vitro condition to study the impacts of salinity (100 mM NaCl) and drought (10% PEG) stresses on morpho-physiological and biochemical traits and their relationships. Iron nanoparticles (INs) (0.0, 0.08, and 0.8 ppm) were applied under all stressed conditions. Both drought and salinity resulted in negative impacts on studied growth parameters, furthermore decreased relative water content (RWC), total chlorophyll content, and increased lipid peroxidation indicated by higher malondialdehyde (MDA) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) production. Comparing relationships between evaluated traits in drought, salinity, and control treatments showed that these abiotic stresses can change the structural relationships among studied parameters. The correlation analysis revealed significant relationships among studied traits under all conditions. Also, the results indicated that most of the observed variability under control, drought and salinity was explained by the two first components, and PC1 and PC2 accounted for 78%, 66% and 89% of the variation, respectively. Moreover, based on heat-map results, three distinct clusters were observed under all conditions. Results showed that higher concentrations of iron in strawberry could be a versatile strategy to cope with stress deleterious effects. Furthermore, the results clearly indicated that relationship between iron and other traits under separate conditions was linear and properly applicable, but the overall relationship is advisable to consider relationships of traits separately for each condition. Also, overall result indicated that application of low concentrations of iron nanoparticles (0.8 ppm) can significantly alleviate the adverse effects of salinity and drought in comparing with Fe-EDTA.
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