Effect of salt stress on the physiological responses, phytochemicals and antioxidant activities of clitoria ternatea var. Pleniflora

• Main Author: Mohd Nasim, Nur A’in
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English; English; English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: T Technology (General)
• Online Access: http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/8295/

Soil salinity is a process of increasing salt in soils. It has become a problem since it keeps spreading geographically from coastal areas to other fertile lands. Therefore, many plants have developed some series of adaptations to mitigate against salinity. Salinity limits the vegetative productions and changes the ecological health of estuaries due to unproductive lands. It lowers the crop yields for daily purposes as well as a threat for biodiversity in which living things loses habitat for both land and in water. Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the growth traits of Clitoria ternatea var. plenifora exposed to different concentrations of sodium chloride, NaCl. Accordingly, it also brings insights into the effect of various concentrations of salt stress on the qualitative phytochemicals content of tannins, flavonoids, glycosides, steroids, terpenoids, alkaloids, phenols and saponins. Moreover, the total phenolic and flavonoid contents were determined quantitatively. Ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP), 2,2’-azino-bis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid (ABTS) and 2,2- diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assays were conducted to evaluate the antioxidant activities of the Clitoria ternatea var. plenifora. Thus, the results from this study revealed that all of the test growth traits ̶ the number of branches and leaves, height of plants, fresh weight of leaves and dry weight of stem, leaves and roots ̶ were the highest under 200 mM of NaCl treatment. Apart from that, under 200 mM of NaCl, Clitoria ternatea var. pleniflora was shown to contain the highest total of phenolic and flavonoid contents among of all the salt stress treatments. Thereupon, the antioxidant activities of FRAP, DPPH and ABTS were also showed to reach at their highest activities under 200 mM of NaCl. In conclusion, 200 mM of NaCl is the optimum concentration for Clitoria ternatea var. pleniflora to improve the growth traits, phytochemicals and antioxidants of Clitoria ternatea var. pleniflora.