CEREAL RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS, cilt.52, sa.1, ss.73-81, 2024 (SCI-Expanded)
Wheat is one of the most significant cereal crops that is utilized to feed the entire world population. Due to extensive irrigation systems and global climate change, salinity is one of the limiting factors of wheat grain yield. Biotic or abiotic stress is known to activate retrotransposons, which are genetic entities capable of inserting new copies in various locations throughout the host genome. Retrotransposons with long terminal repeats (LTR retrotransposons) that play a significant role in genome rearrangement by influencing various environmental factors exist abundantly in wheat genomes. Salicylic acid (SA) is a key signal molecule that helps plants deal with the negative effects of salt stress. The purpose of this study was to reveal how salt stress and salicylic acid affected retrotransposon polymorphism in wheat using retrotransposon-based IRAP (Inter- Retrotransposon Amplified Polymorphism) and REMAP (Retrotransposon-Microsatellite Amplified Polymorphism). The results clearly showed that salinity caused a rise in retrotransposon polymorphism and a decrease in genomic template stability (GTS) value, while SA treatment (1 mM) caused a decrease in retrotransposon polymorphism (from 35.1 to 14.5%) and an increase in GTS value (from 64.9 to 85.5%) under salinity stress. The results of this study suggest that the occurred genomic polymorphism via activation of LTR retrotransposons induced by salt stress might be prevalent and SA is involved in the regulation of this retrotransposon-induced polymorphism.