Abstract
Soil salinity is important abiotic stress affecting various ecosystems worldwide such as grassland. Distinct ecotypes often evolve within species by natural selection to facilitate adaptation to different types of environmental stress. Leymus chinensis is a perennial rhizomatous grass that is widely distributed in the eastern Eurasian steppe; it has two main ecotypes, namely, yellow-green (YG) and gray-green (GG), which differ in their strategy for coping with salinity stress. Few studies have examined the seed germination of the two ecotypes under salinity stress. In this study, the seed germination and seedling growth of two ecotypes of L. chinensis in response to different levels of salinity (NaCl) stress [0 (control), 20, 50, 100, and 200 mM] were examined. Then, ungerminated seeds were placed under normal conditions to evaluate seedling growth following exposure to salt stress (i.e., regermination). The germination percentage was significantly higher, and the mean germination time was significantly shorter in the GG ecotype than in the YG ecotype at all NaCl concentrations. As the salinity level increased, the radicle length of the two ecotypes decreased; however, GG had longer radicles and a higher number of radicles, even at 200 mM NaCl when no radicle protruding from the seed coat was detected in YG. The shoot length of GG was significantly longer than that of YG at all NaCl levels. After salinity stress was removed, the seed germination percentage increased as the original concentration of NaCl applied increased, but the total germination percentage did not significantly differ among NaCl concentrations. The total seed germination percentage of GG was approximately 80%, whereas that of the YG was approximately 20%. The seedling length of regerminated seeds for both GG and YG was similar. The thousand-grain weight of GG was significantly higher than that of YG. GG was more salt-tolerant than YG and might be better capable of surviving in harsher environments, suggesting that GG might be particularly useful for saline grassland restoration.
Highlights
Salinity is an important cause of abiotic stresses in various ecosystems, especially agriculture and grassland (Cramer et al, 2011; Tavakkoli et al, 2011)
GG had higher germination percentages, greater numbers of radicles, longer radicle lengths, shorter germination times, and higher thousand-grain weight compared with YG
These findings indicate that GG had stronger salt tolerance than YG during the seed germination and seedling growth stages
Summary
Salinity is an important cause of abiotic stresses in various ecosystems, especially agriculture and grassland (Cramer et al, 2011; Tavakkoli et al, 2011). Increases in temperature associated with climate change have caused evaporation to exceed precipitation, and this has resulted in a gradual increase in soil salinity. Natural selection has led to the evolution of different ecotypes in many plant species to improve adaptation to environmental stress, such as salinity, drought, and temperature (Chaves et al, 2003; Hameed and Ashraf, 2008; Randin et al, 2009). Seeds are often collected from natural habitats, and environmental factors such as soil salinity, vegetation composition, or the conditions of mother plants might affect some of the physiological and morphological characteristics of seeds (Hameed and Ashraf, 2008; Kheloufi et al, 2019). The purpose of common garden experiments is to subject individuals collected from different habitats to the same growth environment to eliminate the effect of environmental factors (Bender et al, 2002)
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