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Salt tolerance during seed germination and early seedling stages of 12 halophytes

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Abstract

Aims

Most studies on plant responses to salt stress have focused on one salt (e.g., NaCl). The aim of this study was to investigate the salt tolerance of halophytes with different seed masses to three different salts during germination and early seedling growth stages.

Methods

Seeds of 12 halophytes were imbibed with five concentrations of NaCl, NaHCO3, or Na2SO4 solutions or with distilled water. Germination was recorded for 20 days. Un-germinated seeds were transferred to distilled water and recovery of germination was recorded for another 20 days. We measured the Na+ and K+ concentrations in the seedlings after the germination experiments.

Results

Most species showed higher germination percentages in NaCl than in NaHCO3 or Na2SO4 solutions. There were only significant differences in regressions of germination rates and salt concentrations for Anabasis salsa and Kalidium foliatum, between Na2SO4 solutions and the other salts. The Na+ concentration in the seedlings increased with increasing salt concentrations, while the K+ concentration was unchanged. Seed mass was significantly negatively correlated with the Na+/K+ ratio, and with decreasing germination percentage and decreasing germination rate at high salt concentrations.

Conclusions

The halophytes showed species-specific responses to different salts. Some species were salt tolerators, while some were salt avoiders, as indicated by a high percentage recovery of germination in water after the alleviation of salinity. Seed mass was positively related to salt tolerance at high salinities.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Nan Long and Nanjiao Yu for assistance with experiments, and Guangdi Li for advice on data analysis. We thank Dr Louis Irving for comments on the manuscript and Dr Jennifer Smith for language editing. Comments from two reviewers improved the quality of this manuscript. This work was funded by the State Key Basic Research Development Program (973 Program) (2015CB150801, 2009CB825103).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130102, China

    Hongxiang Zhang & Daowei Zhou

  2. State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China

    Guangming Zhang & Xingguo Han

  3. State Key Laboratory of Forest and Soil Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110164, China

    Xiaotao Lü & Xingguo Han

Authors
  1. Hongxiang Zhang
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  2. Guangming Zhang
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  3. Xiaotao Lü
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  4. Daowei Zhou
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  5. Xingguo Han
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Daowei Zhou or Xingguo Han.

Additional information

Responsible Editor: Timothy J. Flowers.

Hongxiang Zhang and Guangming Zhang authors contributed equally to this work.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 4 Water potentials of the tested solutions in this study
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Zhang, H., Zhang, G., Lü, X. et al. Salt tolerance during seed germination and early seedling stages of 12 halophytes. Plant Soil 388, 229–241 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-014-2322-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-014-2322-3

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