The Effect of Salicylic Acid on Response to Water Deficit in Basil

Abstract

Drought-induced stress is the main limiting factor that affects growth and development in plants. In this study, the effect of exogenous application of salicylic acid (SA) on drought tolerance in basil was investigated. The analysis showed that application of SA under drought stress had significant effects on physiological and biochemical parameters, such as photosynthetic pigments content, total phenolics, flavonoids, flavanols and protein content and peroxidise activity, but had no significant effects on the morphological parameters, such as stem length, length and areaof leaves . In drought conditions, total phenolics and peroxidase activity reduced significantly, but all photosynthetic pigments, total flavonoids, flavanols and proteins increased significantly. Application of SA displayed some alleviating effects against drought induced stress through increase of plant growth, total flavonoids content and peroxidase activity.