Vigour/tolerance trade-off in cultivated sunflower (Helianthus annuus) response to salinity stress is linked to leaf elemental composition

Abstract

Developing more stress-tolerant crops will require greater knowledge of the physiological basis of stress tolerance. Here we explore how the variation among twenty cultivated sunflower (Helianthus annuus) genotypes for biomass decline in response to increasing salinity relates to leaf traits and leaf trait adjustments. Genotypes were grown in the greenhouse under five salinity treatments (0, 50, 100, 150, or 200 mM NaCl) for 21 days and assessed for growth, leaf physiological traits, and leaf elemental composition. Results showed that there was a trade-off in performance such that vigorous genotypes, higher biomass at zero mM NaCl, had both a larger absolute decrease and proportional decrease in biomass due to increased salinity. Contrary to expectation, genotypes with a low increase in leaf Na+ and Na+:K+ were no better at maintaining biomass with increasing salinity. Rather, genotypes with a greater reduction in leaf S and K+ content were better at maintaining biomass in the face of increasing salinity. While we found a trade-off between vigour and tolerance, some genotypes were more tolerant than expected. Further analysis of the traits underlying this trade-off will allow us to identify traits/mechanisms that could be bred into high vigour genotypes in order to increase their tolerance.