Abstract
Soil salinization is an important factor that reduces crop yield by causing soil degradation, severely restricting plant growth and development. We examined the usability of four types of ancient ancestral hulled wheat plants in saline soils based on the enzymatic and non-enzymatic responses of the wheat plants to salt stress and evaluated the ability of these varieties to be used in saline soils. We investigated the extent to which four different ancient hulled wheat species from Turkey can be cultivated in saline soils based on their antioxidant response to different salt stresses and the contribution of exogenously applied GB to this response. The fresh and dry weights of the roots and leafy stems of the plants; plant height; leaf length; chlorophyll and carotene contents; total protein, proline and MDA accumulation; and antioxidant enzyme activities were also analyzed. Concentrations of both sodium and potassium chloride salts above 100 mM cause high levels of stress in hulled wheat. When sodium and potassium chloride salts are given together, this stress decreases by approximately 20–30%, and when plants are supplemented with exogenous glycine-betaine, almost all the negative effects of stress disappear. For successful plant growth in saline/sodic environments, it seems that both the type of salt and the type of plant grown in the salty environment are important rather than the amount of salt in the environment. Specifically, in soils where salinity is caused by sodium, ancient hulled wheat is grown rather than modern cultivated wheat, and if potassium-based fertilizers are applied to plants in addition to nitrogen-based fertilizers, the plant can control the ingress of salt into the cell and cope with salinity stress by maintaining the intracellular K+/Na + balance.