The role of NaHS pretreatment in improving salt stress resistance in foxtail millet seedlings: physiological and molecular mechanisms

ABSTRACT

Salt stress is a prevailing abiotic stress in nature, with soil salinization becoming a pressing issue worldwide. High soil salinity severely hampers plant growth and leads to reduced crop yields. Hydrogen sulfide (H₂S), a gas signal molecule, is known to be synthesized in plants exposed to abiotic stress, contributing to enhanced plant stress resistance. To investigate the impact of sodium hydrosulfide hydrate (NaHS, a H₂S donor) on millet’s response to salt stress, millet seedlings were subjected to pretreatment with 200 μM NaHS, followed by 100 mM NaCl stress under soil culture conditions. The growth, osmotic adjustment substances, antioxidant characteristics, membrane damage, and expression levels of related genes in millet seedlings were detected and analyzed. The results showed that NaHS pretreatment alleviated the inhibition of salt stress on the growth of foxtail millet seedlings, increased the proline content and antioxidant enzyme activities, as well as the expression levels of SiASR4, SiRPLK35 and SiHAK23 genes under salt stress. These findings demonstrated that NaHS pretreatment can enhance salt tolerance in foxtail millet seedlings by regulating the content of osmotic adjustment substances and antioxidant enzyme activity, reducing electrolyte permeability, and activating the expression of salt-resistant genes.

KEYWORDS:

• Salt stress
• H₂S
• seedling growth
• antioxidant enzyme activity
• gene expression

Acknowledgments

We appreciate Dr. Junqing Gong (Beijing Forestry University) for her valuable suggestions on the structure of our paper and guidance on some experimental procedures.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors contribution

D.H. designed the entire project and X.Z. wrote the manuscript. Y.D. and M.Y. performed experiment and data analysis. A.W. revised article. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Basic Research Program of Shanxi Province under Grant [number 202203021222242]; the Critical Talent Workstation Project of Taiyuan under Grant [number TYSGJ202201]; and the Scientific and Technological Innovation Project of University in Shanxi Province under Grant [No.2019L0802].