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Soil salinization in arid zones is a major factor that resulted in the reduction in the yield and quality of many important crops in Northwestern China. In this study, the potential mechanism of flue gas desulfurization gypsum by-product (FGDB) mediated amendment of alkaline soils was investigated in an oil sunflower model by accessing the Ca2+ distribution and Ca2+-ATPase activity in leaf cells. Our results demonstrated an increased calcium concentration, as well as intact chloroplast structure with increasing calcium precipitates in the cell wall, intercellular space, and vacuole of leaf cells in the plants grown in alkaline soils supplied with FGDB or CaSO4. Additionally, a dose-dependent Ca2+-ATPase activity was detected in the plasma membrane and tonoplast of leaf cells from the plants grown in FGDB or CaSO4 supplemented soils. These results implied that the Ca2+- ATPase activity cause cytosolic Ca2+ efflux. The Ca2+ influx is through the Ca2+-channels, and increasing cytosolic Ca2+ concentration might benefit the stability and integrity of cell membrane and cell wall, sequentially alleviated the injury of oil sunflower against alkali stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of chemical fertilizer along with organic fertilizer is an important agricultural practice that improves crop yield but also affects soil biogeochemical cycles. In this study, a maize field experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of NPK fertilizer (NPK), organic fertilizer (OF), and their combination (NPK+OF) on soil chemical properties, bacterial and fungal community structures, and diversity compared the control (CK, without any fertilizer). The results showed that the application of OF and NPK-combined OF increased soil organic matter (OM), total N, total P, available N, available P, and available K levels. For alpha diversity analyses, the application of fertilizers led to decreases in soil bacterial and fungal Shannon indices (except for NPK in fungi). Compared with CK, NPK, OF, and NPK+OF fertilization treatments significantly increased the abundances of Acidobacteriota, Gemmatimonadota, and Basidiomycota. Network analysis showed that fertilization produced fewer connections among microbial taxa, especially in the combination of NPK and OF. A redundancy analysis combined with Mantel test further found that the soil OM, available N and P were the main soil-fertility factors driving microbial community variations. Therefore, using organic fertilizer or biological fertilizer combined with chemical fertilizer to improve the status of soil C, N, and P is a promising method to maintain the balance of soil microorganisms in maize field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Salt stress seriously affects yield and quality of crops. The fruit of Lycium barbarum (LBF) is extensively used as functional food due to its rich nutrient components. It remains unclear how salt stress influences the quality of LBF. In this study, we identified 71 differentially accumulated metabolites (DAMs) and 1396 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) among ripe LBF with and without 300 mM of NaCl treatment. Pearson correlation analysis indicated that the metabolomic changes caused by salt stress were strongly related to oxidoreductases; hydrolases; and modifying enzymes, in particular, acyltransferases, methyltransferases and glycosyltransferases. Further analysis revealed that salt stress facilitated flavonoid glycosylation and carotenoid esterification by boosting the expression of structural genes in the biosynthetic pathways. These results suggested that salt stress prompts the modification of flavonoids and carotenoids to alleviate ROS damage, which in turn improves the quality of LBF. Our results lay a solid foundation for uncovering the underlying molecular mechanism of salt stress orchestrating LBF quality, and the candidate genes identified will be a valuable gene resource for genetic improvement of L. barbarum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]