Unraveling triacontanol impact in combating salt stress via enhancing growth, productivity, and physiological performance of wheat plant

BACKGROUND: Recently, the potential benefits of using triacontanol as a foliar treatment to mitigate the negative effects of salt on various crops have increased. RESULTS: Salt-stressed wheat seedlings accumulated higher levels of phenols, hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), lipid peroxidation (MDA), osmolytes (proline, free amino acids and total soluble sugars TSS), and improved some antioxidant enzyme activities (catalase CAT, superoxide dismutase SOD, and peroxidase POD) compared with control plants. Meanwhile, salinity stress significantly decreased photosynthetic pigments, indole acetic acid (IAA) and nitrate reductase (NR) enzyme. All these alterations negatively affected growth characters and yield attributes in terms of shoot and spike length, shoot and spike weight/plant, grain weight/plant, and 1000 grains weight, as well as total carbohydrates of yielded grains. Meanwhile, triacontol treatments (25, 50, and 75 µM) lessened the reduced impact of salt stress on wheat growth and yield, moreover, treatment of triacontanol with 75 μM greatly enhanced the growth characteristics and yield attributes of wheat plants. Also, treatment with 75 μM triacontanol followed by 50 and 25 μM triacontanol resulted in improvements in photosynthetic pigments, IAA, greater phenols, TSS, proline, free amino acids, CAT, POX, SOD. While, H2O2 and MDA contents were decreased significantly in wheat plants treated with triacontanol, the highest decreases were obtained by 75 μM triacontanol foliar treatment. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings highlight the potential role of TRIA in mitigating the reduced impact of salinity stress and draw attention to the necessity of more study to fully comprehend the underlying mechanisms and investigate their usefulness in agricultural practices.