Effects of salt stress on wild type and vte4 mutant Arabidopsis thaliana: Model plant to engineer tolerance towards salinity

One of the major environmental constraints impairing plant distribution and yield is believed to be salt stress. Additionally, engineered abiotic stress resistance or/and tolerance is considered as an indispensable target in order to enhance plant productivity. In this study, the effects of salinity on physiological and morphological of wild type (Columbia-0) and vte4 mutant Arabidopsis thaliana were investigated under different NaCl concentrations. These salt treatments, including control condition, 50mM and 100mM NaCl were imposed on the plants. Each salt treatment was replicated three times in a complete randomized design with factorial arrangement. Wild type and mutant A.thaliana plants were subjected to the abiotic stress (salinity) for up to 11 days to evaluate the parameters of growth, development and water relations. As a result, the performance of wild type plants was stronger than vte4 mutant under different salt treatments. Under control condition, rosette dry weight, maximum quantum efficiency (PSII) and specific leaf area obtained the highest values of 13.85 mg, considered, wild type A.thaliana recorded higher value of 0.82 gW/gFW for relative water content (RWC) under 50mM NaCl whereas mutant plants gained the value of 0.78 gW/gFW under the same condition. However, root mass fraction indicated an increase for both wild type and vte4 mutant plants after 11 days of salt stress onset. The reduction of water potential was observed for wild type and mutant A.thaliana where it scored -1.3 MPa and -1.4, respectively. As a conclusion, these findings implied that under different salt treatments morphological and physiological responses of wild type and vte4 mutant were affected in which wild type plants showed more tolerance. Lack of ?-tocopherol methyltransferase (? -TMT) gene in vte4 seemed to impair defence mechanism of this mutant against salinity.