salicylic acid seed priming enhances germination and seedling growth of lallemantia iberica under mannitol-induced drought stress

Here, the potential effects of salicylic acid (sa)-assisted priming on the germination and seedling growth of lallemantia iberica (cultivar sara) under drought stress was assessed using a factorial experiment based on a completely randomized design (crd) with three replications. salicylic acid (sa) pretreatment was used at four levels (control (zero), 1, 2, and 3 mm) and drought stress was induced using mannitol at two levels (zero and 100 mm). the results showed that the interaction effect of salicylic acid pretreatment with drought stress was statistically significant (p<0.01). high levels of drought stress (100 mm) caused a significant reduction in germination speed, shoot length, shoot weight, seedling dry weight, and relative water content. the highly significant positive correlation between root length and fresh weight (0.946**) suggested that longer roots are associated with greater fresh biomass. the results of the heatmap analysis provided a clear classification of treatments into two distinct groups in terms of the incidence or absence of mannitol. the results of the pca provided insight into the morpho-physiological responses of l. iberica under drought conditions during seed germination, particularly when primed with the stress hormone of sa. the first two components of the analysis accounted for an impressive 91.5% of the total variation in the studied traits. however, pretreatment with sa (3 mm) increased the traits related to germination and seedling growth under drought-stress circumstances compared to stress conditions without sa pretreatment. this indicated that the use of sa pretreatment can mitigate the effects of drought stress on the balangu plant during seed germination and seedling growth.