ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Genet.
Sec. Genomics of Plants and the Phytoecosystem
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fgene.2025.1535610
This article is part of the Research TopicGenetic Dissection and Improvement of Crop Quality and Stress AdaptationView all 4 articles
Effects of salinity stress on morphological structure, physiology, and mRNA expression in different wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars
Provisionally accepted
- 1Yantai Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Yantai, Shandong Province, China
- 2Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Dryland Farming Technology/Shandong Engineering Research Center of Germplasm Innovation and Utilization of Salt-Tolerant Crops, Qingdao Agricultural University, Qingdao, Shandong Province, China
- 3Environmental biotechnology and bioenergy Department, Igor Sikorsky KPI, Peremohy 37, corpus 4, Kyiv, Ukraine
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Salinity is a major abiotic stress that threatens crop yield and food supply in saline soil areas. Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is the most important cereal crop in arid and semiarid land areas, which are often adversely affected by soil salinity. Hence, creating salt tolerance wheat is of great value for utilizing saline soils. In this study, two wheat cultivars QingMai 6 (QM6, salt-tolerant) and Chinese Spring (CS, salt-sensitive) were subjected to salinity stress. Morphological analysis showed that the seedlings of QM6 grew better than CS under salt stress conditions, especially in roots. Electron microscopic studies revealed that salinity stress caused significantly more root hairs and less effect on normal chloroplast structure in QM6 than these in CS. Moreover, QM6 showed a higher photosynthetic activity under salt stress conditions compared to CS. Further investigation showed the salt-tolerant phenotypes of QM6 were accompanied by decreases of reactive oxygen species (ROS) content, and lower antioxidant enzyme activities after salt treatment compared with CS. Additionally, qRT-PCR analyses revealed that the expression level of ROS-scavenging genes (TaSOD6, TaCAT1/5/6, TaPOD7, TaP5CS1) and stress-responsive genes (TaDREB3, TaWRKY19, TaERF5a, TaLTP1, TaTIP2) displayed more transcripts in QM6 than CS. These results provide insight into the mechanisms underlying salt tolerance in wheat, and could be potentially used to develop salt tolerant wheat varieties.
Keywords: wheat, salt stress, morphology, Physiology, Structure, Gene Expression
Received: 27 Nov 2024; Accepted: 15 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sun, Tan, Zhang, Guo, Li, Golub, Zhang and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Huifang Wang, Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Dryland Farming Technology/Shandong Engineering Research Center of Germplasm Innovation and Utilization of Salt-Tolerant Crops, Qingdao Agricultural University, Qingdao, Shandong Province, China
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