ABSTRACT
Drought and salinity are the most important abiotic stresses limiting the production of staple food in the world (Turkan, 2011). More than 6% of the world’s land is affected by salinity or by the conditions associated with sodium (Munns, 2005; Shrivastava and Kumar, 2015; Machado and Serralheiro, 2017). Under salinity stress conditions, plant growth and development are affected by osmotic stress due to the salt accumulation in the root environment and ionic toxicity due to the accumulation of sodium and chloride in the leaves (Kordrostami, Rabiei and Kumleh, 2016). The results of many types of research have shown that under salinity conditions, the early decline in growth is due to factors associated with osmotic stress (Fricke, 2004; Qados, 2011; Rahnama et al., 2011). However, only after a long time and as a result of increasing concentration of sodium in older leaves will the damage caused by ionic toxicity, especially in the old leaves, be visible (Munns and Tester, 2008; Flowers, Munns and Colmer, 2014).
