Seed Priming with Potassium Nitrate Can Enhance Salt Stress Tolerance in Maize

Salinity is a major abiotic stress that hinders plant development and productivity and influences agricultural yield. Seed priming is a technique used to boost germination and seedling growth under abiotic stress. A pot experiment was conducted to evaluate the impact of seed priming with potassium nitrate (KNO3) at various levels (0%, 0.50%, 1.00% and 1.50%) under salt stress (0, 75, 100 mM NaCl) on two maize verities (MNH360 and 30T60) for the growth, development and metabolic attributes results revealed that in maize variety MNH360, KNO3 priming's significantly enhanced growth parameters than in maize variety 30T60 under control and salt-stressed conditions. Priming with KNO3 enhanced carotenoids and total chlorophyll in the 30T60 variety that protected the maize plants from salt stress. Nevertheless, it was shown that priming with 1.00% KNO3 acts as safeguarded to protect them from oxidative damage by salt stress minimizing reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation through increased levels of malondialdehyde (MDA), catalase (CAT), peroxidase (POD), ascorbate peroxidase (APX), and total soluble protein. The findings of the present study confirm that the use of the KNO3 seed priming technique is a lowcost, environmentally friendly technique for mitigating adverse impacts of salt stress in maize crops by activating the antioxidant defense system and improving chlorophyll and osmolyte contents.