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Abstract

Foliar application of ascorbic acid (AsA) was investigated to evaluate its potential for alleviating the salinity stress on strawberry plants. Plants grown in the plastic pots were irrigated with various concentrations of NaCl (0, 50, 100 and 200 mM) to induce salinity stress. Simultaneously, foliar spray of ascorbic acid (0, 0.5 and 1 mM) was applied on plants at regular intervals of 7 days over a period of 30 days. The results revealed that most vegetative and reproductive growth attributes were significantly reduced under salt stress, particularly at 200 mM NaCl. Foliar application of ascorbic acid partially mitigated the adverse effects of salt. All the vegetative growth parameters such as stem diameter, leaf length, leaf width and number of leaves were increased significantly by applying 1 mM ascorbic acid treatment. However, reproductive growth attributes except the number of flowers did not show significant improvement following AsA application under salt stress condition. The plants' protein contents were decreased under NaCl treatment and were not significantly increased with the ascorbic acid application. Similarly, antioxidant enzyme activities including superoxide dismutase (SOD) and peroxidases (POD) were increased under salt stress but did not show much enhancement in response to AsA application. This suggests that their activity primarily reflected stress responsive rather than yield protective role. The outcomes of this investigation indicated that applied AsA provided only partial stress mitigation. Therefore, high AsA concentrations (˃1 mM) should be investigated in future studies to determine optimal dose for improving both vegetative and reproductive growth under saline conditions.

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