EFFECTS OF SALICYLIC ACID PRIMING FOR SALT STRESS TOLERANCE IN WHEAT

Abstract

The present research experiment was conducted in the greenhouse of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, The University of Lahore for determining the possible involvement of salicylic acid (SA) in seed priming and affects on the seedling growth and development under NaCl treatments in wheat variety ANAJ-2017, Shafaq-2006 and Galaxy-2013. The data was collected for various seedling traits and statistically analyzed, which revealed the significance of results for treatments, salt applications, genotypes and the interactions between salt treatments and genotypes. The lower coefficient of variation was recorded for all studied traits which revealed that there was consistency among the results for salicylic acid applications and salt or NaCl treatments. It was concluded from our study that the application of salicylic acid (SA) under salt (NaCl) stress conditions helps wheat seedlings to withstand and compete with stressful conditions. The study revealed that the seed priming with salicylic acid helps to improve root length, shoot length, seedling moisture percentage and fresh seedling weights. The application of NaCl caused to increase the root length, number of roots and shoot length of wheat while salicylic acid (SA) was applied in foliar spray. The use of water priming shows medium effects for the seedling growth of wheat under salt stress environmental conditions. The wheat variety Galaxy-2013 has shown good performance for most of the studied traits of seedlings under salt stress conditions. It was suggested from our study that the variety Galaxy-2013 may be used under salt stress conditions or salt affected soils to improve grain yield of wheat.