article · Plants
Salinity stress negatively impacts lettuce cultivation by reducing leaf numbers, head weight, overall yield, water content, and photosynthetic pigments while raising oxidative stress indicators such as hydrogen peroxide and lipid peroxidation. Treating lettuce with silicon applications and Bacillus thuringiensis as a seed treatment counteracts these detrimental effects under saline conditions. Both treatments improve physiological traits, boosting chlorophyll levels, relative water content, leaf production, and total harvestable yield measured in tonnes per hectare. Furthermore, the treatments decrease cellular membrane damage and oxidative stress markers. This protection is accompanied by an up-regulation of proline accumulation and enhanced activity of key antioxidant enzymes, including catalase, superoxide dismutase, peroxidase, and polyphenol oxidase, which together bolster the salt tolerance mechanisms in lettuce crops.
Soil and water salinity severely constrain agricultural productivity and crop yields worldwide. Demonstrating that beneficial microbes such as Bacillus thuringiensis combined with silicon treatments can protect leafy crops like lettuce from salt stress offers practical insight into maintaining vegetable production in saline environments, supporting food supply stability without relying solely on pristine soils or freshwater.
The findings point towards the development of microbial seed coatings and silicon-based crop treatments for commercial vegetable growers facing saline irrigation water or soil. As an applied biological and mineral intervention tested on agronomic yield parameters, the approach shows relevance to agricultural input manufacturers, though scaling and wider field validation are necessary steps before real-world commercial deployment.
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We investigated the impact of <i>Bacillus thuringiensis</i> as seed treatment and application with silicon on lettuce plants exposed to salinity levels (4 dS m<sup>-1</sup> and 8 dS m<sup>-1</sup>). Results revealed that leaves number, head weight, total yield, relative water content (RWC), and chlorophyll a and b declined considerably due to two salinity levels. Oxidative stress markers, i.e., hydrogen peroxide (H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub>), superoxide (O<sub>2</sub><sup>-</sup>), and lipid peroxidation (MDA) dramatically augmented in stressed plants. On the other hand, leaves number, total yield, RWC, and chlorophyll a, b in stressed lettuce plants were considerably enhanced because of the application of Si or <i>B. thuringiensis.</i> In contrast, EL%, MDA, and H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> were considerably reduced in treated lettuce plants with Si and <i>B. thuringiensis</i>. In addition, the treatment with Si and <i>B. thuringiensis</i> increased head weight (g) and total yield (ton hectare-1), and caused up-regulation of proline and catalase, superoxide dismutase, peroxidase, and polyphenol oxidase activity in lettuce leaves under salinity conditions.
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DOI: 10.3390/plants10051025
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