Priming with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) has emerged as an important strategy to activate multiple acclamatory responses that reinforce resistance to various environmental stresses, including salt stress. This study aimed to investigate the role of H2O2 priming in photosynthetic efficiency of maize plants under salinity. Ten-day old Zea mays plants (BR 5011, a salt-sensitive genotype) were primed with H2O2 at 0 (negative control) and 10 mM (priming), and then subjected to salt stress with NaCl at 0 (control) and 80 mM (salt treatment).Experiments were carried in a randomized completely design, in a 2 x 2 factorial scheme, consisting of two growth conditions (absence or presence of NaCl-stress) and two priming treatments (not-primed or primed with H2O2), with five repetitions. The results suggest that H2O2-primed alleviates salt damage effects on photosynthetic efficiency by improving in CO2 assimilation, effective photosystem II efficiency and electron transport rate, as well as the photosynthetic pigments accumulation. KEYWORDS:

No abstract