Abstract
Soil salinity is an important environmental factor affecting physiological processes in plants. It is possible to limit the negative effects of salt through the exogenous application of microelements. Silicon (Si) is widely recognized as an element improving plant resistance to abiotic and biotic stresses. The aim of the research was to determine the impact of foliar application of Si on the photosynthetic apparatus, gas exchange and DNA methylation of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) grown under salt stress. Plants grown under controlled pot experiment were exposed to sodium chloride (NaCl) in the soil at a concentration of 200 mM, and two foliar applications of Si were made at three concentrations (0.05%, 0.1% and 0.2%). Measurements were made of relative chlorophyll content in leaves (CCl), gas exchange parameters (Ci, E, gs, and PN), and selected chlorophyll fluorescence parameters (Fv/Fm, Fv/F0, PI and RC/ABS). Additionally, DNA methylation level based on cytosine methylation within the 3′CCGG 5′ sequence was analyzed. Salinity had a negative effect on the values of the parameters examined. Exogenous application of Si by spraying leaves increased the values of the measured parameters in plants. Plants treated with NaCl in combination with the moderate (0.1%) and highest (0.2%) dose of Si indicated the lowest methylation level. Decrease of methylation implicated with activation of gene expression resulted in better physiological parameters observed in this group of barley plants.
Highlights
The primary role of agriculture is to provide food for both humans and animals
For plants grown under saline conditions the differences in the relative content of chlorophyll between the control plants and the NaCl variant plants increased with time (Figure 1)
We proved that barley plants which were treated in combination with NaCl and Si (0.1% or 0.2%) indicated higher physiological parameters in comparison to barley plants growing in salt stress condition without adding Si
Summary
The primary role of agriculture is to provide food for both humans and animals. The growing world population and the simultaneous constant shrinkage of resources of arable land suitable for food production poses a number of challenges to modern agriculture.At the same time, soils with increased salt content exist in more than 100 countries, and their global area is approximately 1 billion hectares. Excessive soil salinity affects the availability and supply of soil nutrients to crops and reduces the productivity, the size and quality of the agricultural crop, which is considered to be one of the world’s most important challenges for agricultural production, food security and sustainability [1,4,5,6]. The high level of salt in the soil causes two types of stressful situations in plants: osmotic stress and disruption of ion homeostasis [9,10,11]. As a result of osmotic stress, a number of changes occur in plants, leading to an increase in the level of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the occurrence of oxidative stress [12,13,14,15,16,17]. Crop plants induce a complex and unique cellular and molecular response to various stresses to prevent damage and ensure cell survival [6,25,26,27,28,29,30,31]
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