Exogenous melatonin improves the salt tolerance of cotton by removing active oxygen and protecting photosynthetic organs

Table 1 Effects of melatonin on the morphology of cotton seedlings under salt stress for 12 days

Treatment	Shoot fresh weight (g plant⁻¹)	Shoot dry weight (g plant⁻¹)	Root fresh weight (g plant⁻¹)	Root dry weight (g plant⁻¹)	The total dry weight (g plant⁻¹)
CK	10.52 ± 0.43 a	1.16 ± 0.05 a	4.23 ± 0.48 a	0.26 ± 0.01 a	1.43 ± 0.06 a
S	6.62 ± 0.38 d	0.69 ± 0.06 e	2.69 ± 0.32 d	0.17 ± 0.01 d	0.86 ± 0.07 e
S + MT50 S + MT100 S + MT200 S + MT500	7.06 ± 0.22 d 7.82 ± 0.19 c 9.01 ± 0.58 b 7.68 ± 0.18 c	0.75 ± 0.01 de 0.84 ± 0.05 c 0.97 ± 0.05 b 0.81 ± 0.05 cd	2.87 ± 0.14 d 3.45 ± 0.37 c 3.99 ± 0.11 ab 3.48 ± 0.24 bc	0.20 ± 0.01 c 0.23 ± 0.01 b 0.25 ± 0.02 a 0.22 ± 0.01 b	0.94 ± 0.02 de 1.07 ± 0.05 c 1.22 ± 0.04 b 1.03 ± 0.04 cd

Control (CK) and salt-treated (S) plants were sprayed with distilled water, while S + MT50, S + MT100, S + MT200, and S + MT500 plants were sprayed with 50, 100, 200, and 500 μM MT, respectively. Different lowercase letters indicate significant differences at the p ≤ 0.05 level

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