Salinity Stress Tolerance in Potato Cultivars: Evidence from Physiological and Biochemical Traits

Abstract

Salinity stress is a major constraint to sustainable crop production due to its adverse impact on crop growth, physiology, and productivity. As potato is the fourth most important staple food crop, enhancing its productivity is necessary to ensure food security for the ever-increasing population. Identification and cultivation of salt-tolerant potato genotypes are imperative mitigating strategies to cope with stress conditions. For this purpose, fifty-three varieties of potato were screened under control and salt stress conditions for growth and yield-related traits during 2020. Salt stress caused a mean reduction of 14.49%, 8.88%, and 38.75% in plant height, stem numbers, and tuber yield, respectively in comparison to control. Based on percent yield reduction, the genotypes were classified as salt-tolerant (seven genotypes), moderately tolerant (thirty-seven genotypes), and salt-sensitive genotypes (nine genotypes). Seven salt-tolerant and nine salt-sensitive genotypes were further evaluated to study their responses to salinity on targeted physiological, biochemical, and ionic traits during 2021. Salt stress significantly reduced the relative water content (RWC), membrane stability index (MSI), photosynthesis rate (Pn), transpiration rate (E), stomatal conductance, and K+/Na+ ratio in all the sixteen genotypes; however, this reduction was more pronounced in salt-sensitive genotypes compared to salt-tolerant ones. The better performance of salt-tolerant genotypes under salt stress was due to the strong antioxidant defense system as evidenced by greater activity of super oxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POX), catalase (CAT), and ascorbate peroxidase (APX) and better osmotic adjustment (accumulation of proline). The stepwise regression approach identified plant height, stem numbers, relative water content, proline content, H2O2, POX, tuber K+/Na+, and membrane stability index as predominant traits for tuber yield, suggesting their significant role in alleviating salt stress. The identified salt-tolerant genotypes could be used in hybridization programs for the development of new high-yielding and salt-tolerant breeding lines. Further, these genotypes can be used to understand the genetic and molecular mechanism of salt tolerance in potato.

Potassium Humate and Silicate Combined with Compost Application to Reduce the Harmful Effects of the Irrigation Water Salinity on Potato Plants and on the Soil Available Nutrient Npk

“…While the uptake of K were decreased in potatoes shoot with W2 and W3 treatments, but the decreased was a positive effected with related increments (39.70 and 34.15 kg acre -1 ); (30.86 and 30.59 kg acre -1 ) and (23.40 and 22.55 kg acre -1 ) of W(1,2,3) + F2 compared with the control treatments (20.32 and 18.25 kg acre -1 ), respectively, in both season. These results are in the same line with those of (Sameh et al, 2019 andSanwal et al, 2022), they reported that spraying potato plants with potassium silicate gave the best values for the estimated elements in leaves of potato plants.…”

“…In semi-arid and growing regions, salinity is one of the abiotic factors that has an impact on potato growth and productivity by changing plant metabolism and significantly affecting biochemical and molecular process (Sanwal et al, 2022). All plant systems and enzymatic processes can be severely disrupted by the accumulation of Na+ and Cl-in cells, which is exceedingly poisonous (Flowers et al, 2015).…”

Salt Tolerance Potential in Onion: Confirmation through Physiological and Biochemical Traits

“…In defensive response, the SOD and CAT convert free radical species into H 2 O 2 and oxygen, respectively [ 55 ]. Salt tolerance in tomato, potato, cabbage, and amaranth caused by higher antioxidants activity were also reported [ 48 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 ]. A positive correlation between enhanced antioxidant activity and reduced oxidative damage has been observed in the present study.…”

High throughput phenotyping of functional traits and key indices for selection of salt tolerant Mustard [Brassica juncea (L.) Czern & Coss] genotypes

“…This might lead to deeper comprehension and an integrated method that incorporates several factors of salt‐adaptive traits. To accurately examine phenotypic traits produced by highly computational modelling of multidimensional data and to offer a more thorough knowledge of the complex mechanisms under salt stress, a combination of analyses must be used (Singh & Sastry 2011; Sanwal et al, 2022). To preserve as much information as possible, PCA, for example, lowers the number of variables in a data collection and uses an orthogonal transformation to turn a set of observations of potentially correlated variables into a set of values of uncorrelated variables (Kumawat et al, 2021; Sabouri et al, 2022).…”