Research Article Physiochemical Studies of Sodium Chloride on Mungbean (Vigna radiata L. Wilczek) and Its Possible Recovery with Spermine and Gibberellic Acid Srijita Ghosh, Sanglap Mitra, and Atreyee Paul Department of Botany, Scottish Church College, 1 and 3 Urquhart Square, Kolkata 700006, India Correspondence should be addressed to Srijita Ghosh; srijita.ghosh910@gmail.com Received 31 July 2014; Revised 24 October 2014; Accepted 31 October 2014 Academic Editor: Aryadeep Roychoudhury Copyright © 2015 Srijita Ghosh et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Te physiological and biochemical responses to increasing NaCl concentrations, along with low concentrations of gibberellic acid or spermine, either alone or in their combination, were studied in mungbean seedlings. In the test seedlings, the root-shoot elongation, biomass production, and the chlorophyll content were signifcantly decreased with increasing NaCl concentrations. Salt toxicity severely afected activities of diferent antioxidant enzymes and oxidative stress markers. Activities of antioxidant enzymes, superoxide dismutase (SOD), and catalase (CAT) increased signifcantly over water control. Similarly, oxidative stress markers such as proline, malondialdehyde (MDA), and hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) contents also increased as a result of progressive increase in salt stress. Combined application of NaCl along with low concentrations of either gibberellic acid (5 M) or spermine (50 M) in the test seedlings showed signifcant alterations, that is, drastic increase in seedling elongation, increased biomass production, increased chlorophyll content, and signifcant lowering in all the antioxidant enzyme activities as well as oxidative stress marker contents in comparison to salt treated test seedlings, leading to better growth and metabolism. Our study shows that low concentrations of either gibberellic acid or spermine will be able to overcome the toxic efects of NaCl stress in mungbean seedlings. 1. Introduction Increase in the world population and the decreasing trend of arable land has led to a marked decrease in food security with abiotic stresses, salinity being one of the major contributors in decreasing the crop productivity. Nearly 800 million hectares of land all over the world (6% of the world’s total land area) are salt afected [1]. Salinization problems are on the increase mainly due to poor irrigation drainage or agricultural prac- tices [2]. Tis drastic increase in land area being afected by salinity urges the need to develop strategies to enhance crop productivity under saline conditions. Te negative efects of salinity, owing to increase in Na + and Cl − ions (with Cl − being more dangerous), disturb the homeostasis of essential nutrients [3–5], leading to both hyperionic and hyperosmotic stress. Te efects may be membrane damage, nutrient imbal- ance, alterations in levels of growth regulators, enzymatic inhibition, reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation leading to DNA damage, and activation of programmed cell death [6– 9]. Plants tend to develop multiple detoxifcation mechanisms to prevent ROS from damaging cellular components [10]. Phytohormones interact with nutrients synergistically or antagonistically and regulate plant growth and develop- ment under optimal and stressful environments. Diferent phytohormones such as cytokinins (CK) [11], auxins [12], gibberellins (GA) [13], ethylene [14], nitric oxide (NO) [15], jasmonates (JA) [16], and salicylic acid (SA) [17] play essential roles in alleviating salt stress by regulating plant growth and development. Gibberellic acid (GA 3 ) ameliorates harmful impacts of salinity [13, 18] by establishing better seedling growth and shoot-root biomass. GA 3 favorably afects the water status of the seedlings by partially sustaining protein and RNA levels. Exogenous GA 3 application increased length and dry mass and reduced oxidative stress marker proline in salt afected soybean plants. It also maintained normal growth and development and reversed the inhibitory efects of salt Hindawi Publishing Corporation e Scientific World Journal Volume 2015, Article ID 858016, 8 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/858016