Effect of salinity on Growth and Secondary Metabolites of Sesbania Grandiflora seedlings: An Analytical Study

Abstract

Plants can undergo different types of stresses like biotic and abiotic stresses. Plants develop mechanisms to overcome these threats of biotic and abiotic stresses, which influence secondary metabolite production, enhancing the potential to overproduce useful phytochemicals for varied applications. Salt stress has a major impact on Agriculture. It results in losses of 806.4 billion rupees per year due to low production yield. Salinity affects plants in various aspects including water stress, ion toxicity, nutritional imbalance, oxidative stress, metabolic processes, membrane disorganization, cell division, and genotoxicity. Using in vitro plant cell culture to produce chemicals and pharmaceuticals has made great strides. A soft wooded tree, Sesbania grandiflora has many significant medicinal values that have been proven scientifically. It is known to work as an immune modulator along with the property of nitrogen fixation. A study was conducted to determine the effect of NaCl salinity on growth, morphological analysis, and phytochemical content in Sesbania grandiflora using in vitro method. Seeds of Sesbania grandiflora germinated on 10, 20, and 30mM NaCl salt concentrations for varying durations, and total flavonoid and phenolic content production was calculated to observe the correlation between salt stress and phenolic production. Thus, the salt stress effect and its effect on the phytochemicals were observed. The present study findings provide additional information for the accumulation of phytochemical compounds under salt stress in the plant which might help to explain the increased levels of secondary metabolites in other plant species.