Low Salt Treatment Results in Plant Growth Enhancement in Tomato Seedlings

Abstract

Climate change together with excessive fertilization and poor water quality can affect soil quality and salinization. In plants, high salinity causes osmotic stress, ionic toxicity, and oxidative stress. Consequently, salt stress limits plant development, growth, productivity, and yield. Tomatoes are a very common agricultural product, and some cultivars can partially tolerate salinity. However, most studies are focused on salt excess, which does not necessarily extrapolate on how plants develop in soils with low concentrations of salts. Thus, this study characterizes plant growth and the development of different salt concentrations from 25 to 200 mM in Solanum lycopersicum cv. Moneymaker. Tomato seedlings grown in Murashige and Skoog medium supplied with different NaCl concentrations (0, 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, 175, and 200 mM) showed that low salt concentrations (25 and 50 mM) have a positive impact on lateral root development. This was further observed in physiological parameters such as shoot length, primary root length, and proliferation of lateral roots versus controls. Interestingly, no significant changes in Na+ concentration were observed in 25 mM NaCl in roots or shoots versus controls. Overall, our results suggest that non-toxic salt concentrations can have a positive impact on plant development.

Production and quality of purple kohlrabi under nutrient solutions of different electrical conductivities

“…These negative results can be attributed to the increase of salt concentration in the substrate, which negatively acts Table 1. Summary of F-test for number of leaves (NL), leaf area (LA), leaf fresh mass (LFM), bulb fresh mass (BFM), shoot fresh mass (SFM), bulb volume (BV), leaf dry mass (LDM), root dry mass (RDM), bulb dry mass (BDM), and total dry mass (TDM), specific leaf area (SLA), and leaf area ratio (LAR) of purple kohlrabi fertigated with nutrient solutions of different electrical conductivities (ECns) on the physiological process, reducing water absorption by roots, inhibiting meristematic activity, cell elongation, and consequently reducing plant growth and development (Chen et al, 2022;Ji et al, 2022;Rivera et al, 2022).…”

Constant and Intermittent Contact with the Volatile Organic Compounds of Serendipita indica Alleviate Salt Stress In Vitro Ocimum basilicum L.

“…Even 1.5 g/L NaCl reduced the total fresh weight and dry weight of basil roots [35]. Plant height, stem diameter, leaf number, and dry mass of basil plants were significantly reduced when salt concentration was increased from 0 to 4.80 g/L NaCl [36]. In SETIS, the addition of 1 g/L NaCl seemed to be beneficial for shoot and root length, but at 3 g/L NaCl, there were already negative effects.…”

“…Another negative effect of salinity demonstrated in this experiment was the reduced chlorophyll content in both systems. The reduction of chlorophyll under salt stress has been demonstrated in basil [36], and in many other species, such as sugarcane [38], wheat and barley [39], tomato [40], Prosopis alba [41] and maize [42]. The reduction in chlorophyll content can be explained by the accumulation of intracellular Na + that blocks the uptake of K + from the medium.…”

Investigation of Foliar L-Glutamic Application on the Resistance to the Capacity of the SC2121 Tomato Variety (Solanum lycopersicum L.) to Long-Term Salinity Stress

“…The increase in chlorophyll pigments in low (50 and 100 mM) NaCl doses suggests that the SC2121 variety was tolerant to low salt concentrations (Turfan, 2017;Çelik and Karakurt, 2022). However, the fact that the highest level was found in 50NaCl+250GLU, and 50NaCl-500GLU showed that the low level of glutamic acid application reduced the damage caused by salt stress (Sadak et al, 2015;Rivera et al, 2022). The parameter affected by the treatments the most was the ratio of chlorophyll a to chlorophyll b (Table 5).…”