Salicylic acid ameliorates the adverse effect of salt stress on strawberry

Summary

Strawberry is considered as a salinity sensitive species and is adversely affected in response to the salt stress in terms of growth and yield. Pot experiments were conducted to determine the effect of exogenous salicylic acid (SA) application on physiology, growth, chlorophyll and mineral content of strawberry grown under salt stress and greenhouse conditions. Strawberry plants were treated with SA at different concentrations (0.0, 0.25, 0.50 and 1.00 mM). Salinity treatments were established by adding 0 and 35 mM of NaCl to a base complete nutrient solution. Salt stress negatively affected the growth, chlorophyll content and mineral uptake of strawberry plants. However, plants treated with SA often had greater shoot fresh weight, shoot dry weight, root fresh weight and root dry weight as