Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Applied Research on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jarmap Morphological, physiological and phytochemical response of different Satureja hortensis L. accessions to salinity in a greenhouse experiment Ahmad Estaji a, ⁎ , Hamid Reza Roosta a , Seyed Amin Rezaei a , Seyedh Saeedeh Hosseini a , Fatemeh Niknam b a Department of Horticultural Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, Vali-E-Asr University of Rafsanjan, 7713936417, Iran b Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Agriculture, Vali-E-Asr University of Rafsanjan, Iran ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Accession Essential oil Phenolic compounds Salinity Satureja hortensis ABSTRACT Recently, water salinity is considered as an important factor affecting the quantity and quality of plant products. Plant response to stresses depends on the type of stress, stress intensity, plant species, etc. Many adaptation mechanisms have been developed in different accessions for coping with stress and completing the life cycle. This study is focusing on Satureja hortensis L., an annual herbal plant, which is accepted as a spice and traditional herbal medicine in Iran. The aim of this study is to investigate effects of salinity stress on the morphological, physiological, osmotic and phytochemical parameters of S. hortensis accessions. This experiment was arranged as factorial based on a completely randomized design with three replications. Factors were salinity stress, including 0 and 50 mM NaCl treatments and accessions including Rafsanjan, Zarand, Shahr-e Babak, Sirjan, Kerman, Baft, Jiroft, Bardsir and Kahnuj. All accessions showed significant reduction in their height, leaf area, shoot fresh weight (SFW), shoot dry weight (SDW), total chlorophyll (TChl), chlorophyll a (Chl a), chlorophyll b (Chl b), carotenoids, K, Ca and significant enhancement in Na, Cl, proline, total soluble carbohydrate (TSC), total phe- nolic compounds (TPC), essential oil content and its main components under the salinity stress. Results also show that different accessions have different responses to the salinity stress. We also identified twenty five different compounds in this oil; the majority of them were carvacrol (19–46.6%), ϒ-terpinene (11.59–24.8%), p-cymene (9.84–34.56%), myrcene (1.4–2.78%) and β-pinene (1.20–1.91%). According to our results, Rafsanjan, Zarand and Kahnuj accessions showed more resistance to the salinity stress. Accumulating more osmolytes, essential oil, K and Ca, which caused more dry mass production, may cause increasing their resistancy toward the salinity stress. 1. Introduction Summer savory (Satureja hortensis L.) is an annual plant, belongs to the Lamiaceae family and is native to the eastern Mediterranean region and western Asia (Silic, 1979). It is an annual medicinal plant which is regarded as a spice and traditional herb in Iran. Summer savory plants also have antispasmodic, antidiarrheal, antioxidant, sedative and anti- microbial properties (Gursoy et al., 2009). Beneficial effects of S. hor- tensis and its essential oil on the hypertension and carminative effects were also reported by Svoboda (2003). Thyme and carvacole are two major compounds of this essential oil, which have antiseptic, anti- fungal and anti-bacterial characteristics (Deans and Svoboda, 1989). Savory herb contains many vitamins, including B-complex group vita- mins, vitamin-A, vitamin-C, niacin, thiamin and pyridoxine, which make it an excellent herb to be used for medicinal purposes (Jadczak, 2007). Different factors like genetic and environmental condition can re- markably affect chemical constituents of medicinal plants and their morphological and physiological parameters (Heywood, 2002). Dif- ferent environmental conditions can be the main reason of difference in morphological parameters, which is able to change plant’s phenotype in a short term and plant’s genotype in a long term (Saito and Matsuda, 2010). Abiotic environmental tensions such as salinity and drought stress, decrease plant growth and development significantly (Flowers and Muscolo, 2015; Khoyerdi et al., 2016). Over the last century, sali- nity has become a well-documented problem affecting agricultural production worldwide, particularly in the arid and semiarid regions (Alam et al., 2015b). Plant responses to salinity stress are complex and https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmap.2018.04.005 Received 27 August 2017; Received in revised form 11 April 2018; Accepted 24 April 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Tel.: +989192681257. E-mail addresses: estaji1366@gmail.com, estaji_ahmad@yahoo.com (A. Estaji). Abbreviations: SDW, shoot dry weight; SFW, shoot fresh weight; TPC, total phenolic compounds; TSC, total soluble carbohydrate; Chl a, chlorophyll a; Chl b, chlorophyll b; TChl, total chlorophyll Journal of Applied Research on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 2214-7861/ © 2018 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Estaji, A., Journal of Applied Research on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmap.2018.04.005