遗传学与基因组杂志

Caffeic acid helps to mitigate adverse effects of soil salinity and other abiotic stresses in legume

Abstract

Muhammad Zafar-ul-Hye*, Muhammad Shakeel Nawaz, Hira Asghar, Muhammad Waqas and Fiza Mahmood

Leguminous crops are beneficial components of sustainable crops production. Biotic and abiotic stresses especially salinity is a wide spread environmental problem. It is more profound in the irrigated areas, where the underground water is brackish. Plant vegetative and reproductive growth is adversely affect by salinity and other abiotic stresses like drought and presence of heavy metals etc. Certain organic  compounds  which  are produced at  cellular  level  in plants  help  in reducing  the effect of different  stresses  through increasing  the nutrients  uptake efficiency,  antioxidants  activity  and by decreasing the  toxicity  of ions. Caffeicacid is actively involved in the synthesis of lignin in plants. Increasing the thickness of cell wall and improving plants defense mechanism become active against any stress like ion toxicity and heavy metals contamination. Superoxide radical binds due to use of caffeic acid, thus decreasing the stress of salinity to minimize lipoxygenase function. The ferulic acid is produced through caffeic acid mobilization by o-methyl transferase. Exogenous application of caffeic acid is a good enough option against different stresses like salinity, drought and heavy metals