Chin J Plant Ecol ›› 2013, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (7): 656-664.DOI: 10.3724/SP.J.1258.2013.00068

• Research Articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Responses to salt stress among different genotypes of tea Chrysanthemum

LÜ Jin-Hui1,REN Lei1,LI Yan-Feng1,WANG Xuan1,ZHAO Xia-Lu1,ZHANG Chun-Lai1,2,*()   

  1. 1College of Forestry, Shanxi Agricultural University, Taigu, Shanxi 030801, China
    2Institute for Sorghum Research, Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Yuci, Shanxi 030600, China
  • Received:2013-01-07 Accepted:2013-05-10 Online:2013-01-07 Published:2013-07-05
  • Contact: ZHANG Chun-Lai

Abstract:

Aims Our objective was to investigate the physiological response of tea Chrysanthemum cultivars to salt stress in order to select salt-tolerant cultivars for use in saline soil.
Methods Stress physiological, biochemical and photosynthetic physiological parameters were measured for four tea Chrysanthemum cultivars, which were irrigated with nutrient solution adding different concentrations of NaCl (40, 80, 120, 160 and 200 mmol·L-1) as treatment and without addition of NaCl as control.
Important findings Following the increase with the degree of NaCl stress, data of relative membrane permeability (Cond), malonic aldehyde (MDA), proline (Pro) and soluble sugar (SS) content were increased in leaves of different genotypes of tea Chrysanthemum, while superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity was initially increased and then decreased. Leaf chlorophyll (Chl) content of the ‘Fanbailu’ and ‘Yurenmian’ cultivars were initially increased then decreased, but continued to decline in the ‘Ruhe’ and ‘Huangchulong’ cultivars. Net photosynthetic rate (Pn), transpiration rate (Tr) and stomatal conductance (Gs) were significantly reduced, but the stomatal limitation value was first increased and then decreased following the increase of salt concentrations. Values of subordinate function were used to evaluate the salt tolerance among different tea Chrysanthemum cultivars. The salinity tolerance for those cultivars was ‘Ruhe’ > ‘Yurenmian’ > ‘Fanbailu’ > ‘Huangchulong’. Under NaCl stress, parameters for Chl, Pn, Tr and Gs were decreased less in ‘Yurenmian’ and ‘Ruhe’ than in the other two cultivars while parameters for MDA content and stomatal limitation value were increased less in ‘Yurenmian’ and ‘Ruhe’ than in the other two cultivars.

Key words: NaCl stress, photosynthetic physiology, physiological response, salt tolerance, tea Chrysanthemum