Potassium and sodium relations in salinised barley tissues as a basis of differential salt tolerance

Abstract

A large-scale glasshouse trial, including nearly 70 barley cultivars (5300 plants in total), was conducted over 2 consecutive years to investigate plant physiological responses to salinity. In a parallel set of experiments, plant salt tolerance was assessed by non-invasive microelectrode measurements of net K+ flux from roots of 3-day-old seedlings of each cultivar after 1 h treatment in 80 mm NaCl as described in our previous publication (Chen et al. 2005). K+ flux from the root in response to NaCl treatment was highly (P < 0.001) inversely correlated with relative grain yield, shoot biomass, plant height, net CO2 assimilation, survival rate and thousand-seed weight measured in glasshouse experiments after 4–5 months of salinity treatment. No significant correlation with relative germination rate or tillering was found. In general, 62 out of 69 cultivars followed an inverse relationship between K+ efflux and salt tolerance. In a few cultivars, however, high salt tolerance (measured as grain yield at harvest) was observed for plants showing only modest ability to retain K+ in the root cells. Tissue elemental analysis showed that these plants had a much better ability to prevent Na+ accumulation in plant leaves and, thus, to maintain a higher K+/Na+ ratio. Taken together, our results show that a plant’s ability to maintain high K+/Na+ ratio (either retention of K+ or preventing Na+ from accumulating in leaves) is a key feature for salt tolerance in barley.

Stress-Tolerant Feedstocks for Sustainable Bioenergy Production on Marginal Land

“…Of the 17 crops evaluated, several species or genotypes were highly tolerant of salinity (Table 3). Deep-rooted perennial grasses are often recommended for drought-and salt-affected soils [180][181][182][183], and our literature search corroborated this recommendation. However, some of these grasses were more tolerant than others.…”

Deregulation of apoplastic polyamine oxidase affects development and salt response of tobacco plants

“…High cytosolic K + is also required to maintain metabolic processes, such as protein synthesis by enabling tRNA binding to ribosomes (Chao et al, 2013 and references therein). A strong negative correlation between the magnitude of salt-induced K + loss and salt tolerance, suggests K + retention as a selection criterion between salt tolerant and sensitive varieties (Chen et al, 2005(Chen et al, , 2007a(Chen et al, , 2007bLu et al, 2013;Smethurst et al, 2008). Increase of Ca 2+ during abiotic and biotic stresses is required for tolerance in Arabidopsis (Johnson et al, 2014).…”

The interaction of salinity and chromium in the influence of barley growth and oxidative stress

“…The experiment was conducted in a greenhouse of Huajiachi Campus, Zhejiang University (Hangzhou, China; 31°16/N, 120°12/E). Uniform seeds of two barley genotypes differing in salt tolerance (tolerant, CM 72 and sensitive, Gairdner) (Chen et al 2007) were surface sterilized in a 3% H 2 O 2 for 20 min, rinsed with distilled water 10 times. Then seeds were soaked in deionized water in the dark for 12 h and sown into moist quartz sand in a controlled chamber with photoperiod of 16 h light/8 h dark and light intensity of 225 ± 25 µmol/m 2 /s.…”