Study of protein expression pattern and some morphological and biochemical characteristics of Badami-Sefid and Badami-Zarand pistachio rootstocks under salt stress

Salinity stress is one of the most important environmental stresses affecting pistachio trees and causes decrease its production. In this experiment the effect of salinity stress on protein expression pattern, the content of proline and antioxidant enzymes (catalase, gayacol peroxidase, ascorbate peroxidase and superoxide dismutase) were carried out on two pistachio rootstocks including of Badami-Sefid and Badiami-Zarand. The experiment was performed as factorial based on Completely Randomized Design in a controlled greenhouse condition with three treatments and 20 replications. In this research, three salinity treatments were used include control (distilled water), moderate stress (60 mM NaCl) and severe stress (120 mM NaCl). After appearing the salt stress symptoms (decrease of vegetative growth and leaf area), protein pattern and some morphological and biochemical characteristics were determined. Results showed that protein expression pattern, vegetative growth and biochemical characteristics were affected by salinity treatments and responses of the two rootstocks were completely different. Under salinity stress, Badami-Sefid rootstock exhibited more protein bands reduction and elimination compared to Badami-Zarand. Results also showed that vegetative growth and total chlorophyll content in Badami-Sefid rootstock were decreased more than Badami-Zarand under salinity stress. Also, it has been found that by increasing salinity levels, proline content and antioxidant enzyme activities were higher in BadamiZarand compared to Badami-Sefid. It seems that Badami-Zarand rootstock has more ability to keep leaf proteins and therefore, higher resistance to salinity stress.