Mycorrhizal symbiosis alleviate salinity stress in pistachio plants by altering gene expression and antioxidant pathways

Akbar Safipour Afshar; Hossein Abbaspour

doi:10.1007/s12298-023-01279-8

Mycorrhizal symbiosis alleviate salinity stress in pistachio plants by altering gene expression and antioxidant pathways

Physiol Mol Biol Plants. 2023 Feb;29(2):263-276. doi: 10.1007/s12298-023-01279-8. Epub 2023 Jan 23.

Authors

Akbar Safipour Afshar¹, Hossein Abbaspour²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biology, Neyshabur Branch, Islamic Azad University, Neyshabur, Iran.
² Department of Biology, North Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

This study investigated how inoculation of salt-stressed Pistacia vera seedlings with Rhizophagus irregularis, an arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (AMF), affects their biomass, oxidative damage, antioxidant enzyme activity, and gene expression. Pistachio seedlings (N:36) were randomly assigned to AMF inoculation and non-inoculation groups in a pot experiment with 9 replications. Each group was further divided and randomly assigned to two salinity treatments (0 and 300 mM NaCl). At the end of week 4, three pistachio plantlets were randomly selected from each group for Rhizophagus irregularis colonization inspection, physiological and biochemical assays, and biomass measurements. Salinity activated enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidant systems in the pistachio plants were studied. The negative effects of salinity included reduced biomass and relative water content (RWC), increased O₂ ^·-, H₂O₂, MDA, and electrolytic leakage. Generally, Rhizophagus irregularis was found to mitigate the adverse effects of salinity in pistachio seedlings. AMF inoculation resulted in even further increases in the activities of SODs, POD, CAT, and GR enzymes, upregulating Cu/Zn-SOD, Fe-SOD, Mn-SOD, and GR genes expression in plants under salinity stress. Moreover, AMF significantly increased AsA, α-tocopherol, and carotenoids under both control and salinity conditions. The study concludes with a call for future research into the mechanisms of mycorrhiza-induced tolerance in plants under salinity stress.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12298-023-01279-8.

Keywords: Oxidative stress; Pistacia vera; ROS; Rhizophagus irregularis; Salinity.

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