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RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

The mechanisms underlying melatonin improved soybean seedling growth at different nitrogen levels

Huamei Wang https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6415-6723 A , Chunyuan Ren A , Liang Cao A , Xijun Jin A , Mengxue Wang A , Mingcong Zhang A , Qiang Zhao A , He Li A , Yuxian Zhang A B * and Gaobo Yu A *
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A College of Agronomy, Heilongjiang Bayi Agricultural University, Daqing 163319, China.

B National Coarse Cereals Engineering Research Center, Daqing 163000, China.

* Correspondence to: zyx_lxy@126.com, yugaobo81@163.com

Handling Editor: Honghong Wu

Functional Plant Biology 48(12) 1225-1240 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP21154
Submitted: 3 March 2021  Accepted: 25 August 2021   Published: 11 October 2021

© 2021 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

To investigate the function of melatonin (MT) on nitrogen uptake and metabolism in soybean, six groups of treatments, with and without 100 μM melatonin were conducted at low, normal, and high nitrogen levels (1.5, 7.5, and 15 mM, respectively). The related indexes of nitrogen metabolism and the antioxidant system of seedlings were measured and analysed. Results indicated that MT could enhance the level of nitrogen metabolism by upregulating the coding genes of enzymes related to nitrogen metabolism and increasing total nitrogen content, especially under low nitrogen levels. Under high nitrogen conditions, the addition of MT not only accelerated ammonium assimilation and utilisation by enhancing the activity of glutamine synthetase involved in ammonium assimilation, but also reduced the extent of membrane lipid peroxidation to alleviate the degree of damage by improving the activity of antioxidant enzymes. In addition, MT enhanced soybean growth with positive effects in morphological changes at different nitrogen levels, including significantly increased stem diameter, total leaf area, and root nodule number, and biomass accumulation. Finally, biomass accumulation increased under low, normal, and high nitrogen levels by 9.80%, 14.06%, and 11.44%, respectively. The results suggested that MT could enhance the soybean tolerance to low and excessive N treatments.

Keywords: crop physiology, legumes, melanin, nitrogen inappropriate, nitrogen metabolism, nitrogen nutrition, nitrogen regulation, soybean.


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