scholarly journals Melatonin Application Improves Salt Tolerance of Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) by Enhancing Antioxidant Capacity

Plants ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huifang Cen ◽  
Tingting Wang ◽  
Huayue Liu ◽  
Danyang Tian ◽  
Yunwei Zhang

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) is an important and widely cultivated forage grass. The productivity and forage quality of alfalfa are severely affected by salt stress. Melatonin is a bioactive molecule with versatile physiological functions and plays important roles in response to various biotic and abiotic stresses. Melatonin has been proven efficient in improving alfalfa drought and waterlogging tolerance in recent studies. In our reports, we applied melatonin exogenously to explore the effects of melatonin on alfalfa growth and salt resistance. The results demonstrated that melatonin application promoted alfalfa seed germination and seedling growth, and reduced oxidative damage under salt stress. Further application research found that melatonin alleviated salt injury in alfalfa plants under salt stress. The electrolyte leakage, malondialdehyde (MDA) content and H2O2 content were significantly reduced, and the activities of catalase (CAT), peroxidase (POD), and Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase (Cu/Zn-SOD) were increased with melatonin pretreatment compared to control plants under salt stress with the upregulation of genes related to melatonin and antioxidant enzymes biosynthesis. Melatonin was also involved in reducing Na+ accumulation in alfalfa plants. Our study indicates that melatonin plays a primary role as an antioxidant in scavenging H2O2 and enhancing activities of antioxidant enzymes to improve the salt tolerance of alfalfa plants.

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-196
Author(s):  
Ensieh Ashrafi ◽  
Morteza Zahedi ◽  
Jamshid Razmjoo

The effect of salt stress on enzyme activities of nine alfalfa cultivars at germination and seedling stage was studied. The activities of SOD, GR, POX and APOX were higher in salt tolerant and lower in salt sensitive cultivars. Results of the effect of salt stress on the SOD, GR, POX, APOX activities and MDA content may be used to select salt tolerance cultivars at the germination and seedling stages. SOD, GR, POX, APOX and MDA may play an important role in salt tolerant mechanisms in alfalfa. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bjb.v43i2.21672 Bangladesh J. Bot. 43(2): 191-196, 2014 (September)


2018 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Farissi ◽  
Mohammed Mouradi ◽  
Omar Farssi ◽  
Abdelaziz Bouizgaren ◽  
Cherki Ghoulam

Salinity is one of the most serious agricultural problems that adversely affects growth and productivity of pasture crops such as alfalfa. In this study, the effects of salinity on some ecophysiological and biochemical criteria associated with salt tolerance were assessed in two Moroccan alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) populations, Taf 1 and Tata. The experiment was conducted in a hydro-aeroponic system containing nutrient solutions, with the addition of NaCl at concentrations of 100 and 200 mM. The salt stress was applied for a month. Several traits in relation to salt tolerance, such as plant dry biomass, relative water content, leaf gas exchange, chlorophyll fluorescence, nutrient uptake, lipid peroxidation and antioxidant enzymes, were analyzed at the end of the experiment. The membrane potential was measured in root cortex cells of plants grown with or without NaCl treatment during a week. The results indicated that under salt stress, plant growth and all of the studied physiological and biochemical traits were significantly decreased, except for malondialdehyde and H2O2 contents, which were found to be increased under salt stress. Depolarization of membrane root cortex cells with the increase in external NaCl concentration was noted, irrespective of the growth conditions. The Tata population was more tolerant to high salinity (200 mM NaCl) and its tolerance was associated with the ability of plants to maintain adequate levels of the studied parameters and their ability to overcome oxidative stress by the induction of antioxidant enzymes, such as guaiacol peroxidase, catalase and superoxide dismutase.


Agronomy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Surendra Bhattarai ◽  
Dilip Biswas ◽  
Yong-Bi Fu ◽  
Bill Biligetu

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) is an important legume forage crop. However, its genetic improvement for salt tolerance is challenging, as alfalfa’s response to salt stress is genetically and physiologically complex. A review was made to update the knowledge of morphological, physiological, biochemical, and genetic responses of alfalfa plants to salt stress, and to discuss the potential of applying modern plant technologies to enhance alfalfa salt-resistant breeding, including genomic selection, RNA-Seq analysis, and cutting-edge Synchrotron beamlines. It is clear that alfalfa salt tolerance can be better characterized, genes conditioning salt tolerance be identified, and new marker-based tools be developed to accelerate alfalfa breeding for salt tolerance.


Agronomy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleni Tani ◽  
Efi Sarri ◽  
Maria Goufa ◽  
Georgia Asimakopoulou ◽  
Maria Psychogiou ◽  
...  

Salinity is a major limiting factor in crop productivity worldwide. Medicago sativa L. is an important fodder crop, broadly cultivated in different environments, and it is moderately tolerant of salinity. Medicago arborea L. is considered a stress-tolerant species and could be an important genetic resource for the improvement of M. sativa’s salt tolerance. The aim of the study was to evaluate the seedling response of M. sativa, M. arborea, and their hybrid (Alborea) to salt shock and salt stress treatments. Salt treatments were applied as follows: salt stress treatment at low dose (50 mM NaCl), gradual acclimatization at 50–100 and 50–100–150 mM NaCl, and two salt shock treatments at 100 and 150 mM NaCl. Growth rates were evaluated in addition to transcriptional profiles of representative genes that control salt uptake and transport (NHX1 and RCI2A), have an osmotic function (P5CS1), and participate in signaling pathways and control cell growth and leaf function (SIMKK, ZFN, and AP2/EREB). Results showed that the studied population of M. sativa and M. arborea performed equally well under salt stress, whereas that of M. sativa performed better under salt shock. The productivity of the studied population of Alborea exceeded that of its parents under normal conditions. Nevertheless, Alborea was extremely sensitive to all initial salt treatments except the low dose (50 mM NaCl). In addition, significantly higher expression levels of all the studied genes were observed in the population of M. arborea under both salt shock and salt stress. On the other hand, in the population of M. sativa, NHX1, P5CS1, and AP2/EREB were highly upregulated under salt shock but to a lesser extent under salt stress. Thus, the populations of M. sativa and M. arborea appear to regulate different components of salt tolerance mechanisms. Knowledge of the different parental mechanisms of salt tolerance could be important when incorporating both mechanisms in Alborea populations.


2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. 765-776 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Campanelli ◽  
Claudia Ruta ◽  
Irene Morone-Fortunato ◽  
Giuseppe Mastro

AbstractIn order to quickly and efficiently evaluate the salt tolerance of alfalfa, salinity tests were conducted on Medicago sativa L. var. australis, var. icon, var. loi, and var. gea, under in vitro conditions. Pregerminated seeds of four varieties were subjected to five different NaCl concentrations (0, 50, 100, 150, 200 mM). The influence of saline stress was estimated on the basis of survival percentage, growth parameters, and electrolyte leakage. The seedlings surviving on the medium enriched with salt at the highest concentration were presumed to be tolerant and represented the mother plants for the production of in vitro clones. In the following step, the clones were evaluated in vitro to confirm the salt tolerance. The influence of mild salt stress (75 mM NaCl) on the growth parameters of selected clones was examined. At the end of this trial, the proline accumulation and sodium content in alfalfa shoots were also quantified. The results suggest an increased level of proline promotes salt tolerance. Medicago sativa L. var. icon is highly tolerant in comparison with the other varieties tested. In vitro selection of M. sativa L. varieties on salt-containing media allowed us to obtain clones with increased salinity tolerance.


2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-127
Author(s):  
F. ABDEL-TAWAB ◽  
EMAN FAHMY ◽  
M. EL- NAHRAWY ◽  
WAFAA SHARAWY ◽  
MERVAT SAYED

Cells ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 3372
Author(s):  
Cesar A. Medina ◽  
Harpreet Kaur ◽  
Ian Ray ◽  
Long-Xi Yu

Agronomic traits such as biomass yield and abiotic stress tolerance are genetically complex and challenging to improve through conventional breeding approaches. Genomic selection (GS) is an alternative approach in which genome-wide markers are used to determine the genomic estimated breeding value (GEBV) of individuals in a population. In alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.), previous results indicated that low to moderate prediction accuracy values (<70%) were obtained in complex traits, such as yield and abiotic stress resistance. There is a need to increase the prediction value in order to employ GS in breeding programs. In this paper we reviewed different statistic models and their applications in polyploid crops, such as alfalfa and potato. Specifically, we used empirical data affiliated with alfalfa yield under salt stress to investigate approaches that use DNA marker importance values derived from machine learning models, and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of marker-trait association scores based on different GWASpoly models, in weighted GBLUP analyses. This approach increased prediction accuracies from 50% to more than 80% for alfalfa yield under salt stress. Finally, we expended the weighted GBLUP approach to potato and analyzed 13 phenotypic traits and obtained similar results. This is the first report on alfalfa to use variable importance and GWAS-assisted approaches to increase the prediction accuracy of GS, thus helping to select superior alfalfa lines based on their GEBVs.


2020 ◽  
pp. 117394
Author(s):  
Thierry Hellebois ◽  
Christos Soukoulis ◽  
Xuan Xu ◽  
Jean-Francois Hausman ◽  
Alexander Shaplov ◽  
...  

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