Assessment of Physiological, Cellular and Biochemical Responses to Salt Stress in Vigna mungo and Cicer arietinum : A Preliminary Study

Abstract

A major environmental stress that affects plant growth negatively is salt stress. It is responsible for damaging an array of commercial plants utilized as food sources in several countries. Plants being sessile, are unable to avoid the effects of salt stress. The primary goal of this specific research was to analyze the morphological, cellular, and biochemical impact of salt stress on two commercially important crops, Vigna mungo and Cicer arietinum plants by subjecting them to two concentrations of salt viz. 50 and 100 mM while maintaining control. The crops were subjected to stress and growth, biochemical and genetic parameters were assessed. The growth parameters Showed that stress inflicted by plants significantly affected shoot length and root length and the quantitative change in adventitious roots. It was also observed to destroy both species’ tetrad structure of the vascular bundles. The impact was also visible on the cell division, where the mitosis was observed to decrease considerably. The biochemical assays indicated that NaCl significantly induced stress in these plants by reducing the catalase activity along with the chlorophyll pigments and causing an accumulation of proline and phenolic compounds. The comparative study showed that V. mungo’s response to the salt stress exceeded that of C. arietinum at similar salt concentrations, indicating that assessing the soil for these specific stress inducing ions before crop plantation will help in enhancing the productivity of the land, thereby increasing the yield.