Abstract
Melatonin (MT) is a tryptophan derivative with multiple functions in both animals and plants. Exogenously-provided MT such as through seed priming has emerged as an effective way to improve stress tolerance of plants. However, little is known about MT priming in improving salinity tolerance of halophytes particularly during their early life-cycle stages. We therefore examined roles of MT priming in enhancing salinity tolerance of seeds and nascent seedlings of five warm subtropical halophytes. Priming with different MT concentrations alleviated primary dormancy of the seeds of annual halophytes Z. simplex and P. oleracea. Seed priming with MT also reduced the inhibitory effects of salinity on germination of halophytes by improving mean final and rate of germination under saline conditions. MT priming also improved germination recovery, when un-germinated seeds were transferred from saline solutions to water. Furthermore, MT priming also improved growth parameters such as total length, leaf area and photosynthetic pigments of the seedlings of test species under both non-saline and saline conditions. In general, low (5 and 100 µM) concentrations of MT were found most effective in improving seed dormancy, germination and early seedling growth of halophytes particularly under saline conditions.
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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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This work was supported by the NRPU grant from the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan.
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This work was supported by NRPU grant from the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan.
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SH: planed study, performed experiments, analyzed data and prepared first draft; FN: helped in data analysis and preparation of first draft; BG: helped in experiment design and reviewed the manuscript; AH: was involved in experiment design, data interpretation, reviewing and finalizing the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final version of this manuscript.
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Hussain, S., Nisar, F., Gul, B. et al. Seed priming with melatonin improved salinity tolerance of halophytes during early life-cycle stages. Plant Growth Regul 103, 351–368 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10725-023-01110-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10725-023-01110-0