Abstract:
Objective Salt stress is one of the most severe abiotic stresses limiting the growth of mung bean, and how to alleviate salt stress in mung bean has become an important topic in plant stress research. Hydrogen-rich water, as a new exogenous additive, plays an important role in improving plant stress resistance, so this paper aims to investigate the feasibility of exogenous hydrogen-rich water to alleviate salt stress in mung bean.
Methods The study was conducted to investigate the mitigating effect of root irrigation with different concentrations of hydrogen-rich water (25%, 50% and 100%) on mung bean seedlings under salt stress at 1.5 g kg−1 salinity in terms of seedling growth indices, photosynthetically active pigment content and stress tolerance indices using sand culture as test material.
Results Compared with the control, the growth and leaf photosynthetic pigment contents of mung bean seedlings were significantly inhibited, and the contents of malondialdehyde, soluble sugars and soluble proteins were significantly increased under the 1.5 g kg−1 salt stress treatment. Compared with the 1.5 g kg−1 salt stress treatment, the applications with different concentrations of exogenous hydrogen-rich water (25%, 50% and 100%) were effective in promoting the growth of roots and aerial parts of mung bean seedlings, increasing the content of chlorophyll, decreasing the content of malondialdehyde, and increasing the content of soluble sugars and soluble proteins.
Conclusion Different concentrations of exogenous hydrogen-rich water treatments can alleviate salt stress in mung bean seedlings, and the treatment with 50% hydrogen-rich water has the best alleviating effect. The use of exogenous hydrogen-rich water to alleviate salt stress has low cost, simple operation, and no environmental pollution, which will have certain guiding significance for the application of exogenous hydrogen-rich water in alleviating salt stress.