Biochemical Changes in Two Parsley (Petroselinum crispum L.) Varieties during Saline Stress

Parsley root has been used medicinally since ancient times for possible medicinal qualities including antioxidative, antimicrobial, laxative, antihy-perlipidemic, anticoagulant and antihepatotoxic (1). The parsley importance is attributed to its high vitamins content (mainly vitamins C), anti-oxidants, and some mineral elements such as iron, as well as volatile oils that play an important role in the pharmaceutical and food industries (2). Because of many antioxidants present in this plant, supplementation of the diets with fresh parsley leaf cans significant increase antioxidant capacity which play a special role in people nutrion (3). But unfortunately abiotic stresses, such as salinity, can decrease persley growth. For this reason, plants have developed some protection mechanisms against the harmful effects of reactive oxygen species (ROS) formed after the stresses and to alleviate their deleterious effects. To protect cells and to keep the levels of ROS under control, plants generate non-enzymatic and enzymatic antioxi-dant systems (4, 5). Measurements of the antioxi-dant enzyme activity may provide information concerning the degree of exposure of plant tissues to ROS. Although the Petroselinum crispum is now cultivated throughout the world our study refers at two parsley seeds variants (cultivated for roots and leaves production) growth in saline conditions. To investigate the response of these parsley variants to NaCl treatments some antioxidative enzymes-superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and peroxidase (POD) in 14-days old parsley seedling were investigated. Thus, the seeds of each parsley variants were placed in plastic pots containing soil and watered with different NaCl (50mM, 100mM, 150mM) concentrations. Distilled water was used for control. The watering was carried out for 14 days, after which the plantlets were collected for biochemical evaluation. It was used spectrophoto-metric methods (6) for quantification of enzymes activities and it was reported as U/mg protein. Antioxidant enzymes responses to salt stress of the two varieties of parsley (cultivated for roots and leaves production) were different (Table 1). SOD activity, the first line of cell defense against ROS generated by saline stress had different pattern in the parsley varieties. In P. crispum cultivated for roots, the treatment with 100 mM and 150mM NaCl was low being influenced either to increase (3.20%) it or decrease (5.86%) SOD activity, in comparison with control. The saline stress decrease (22.9%) the SOD activity in P. crispum cultivated for leaves. At higher concentration 150 mM NaCl the plantlet did not survive. CAT, major ROS-scavenging enzyme find in pe-roxisomes, converts the toxic H …