Domestication influences morphological and physiological responses to salinity in seedlings.

cultivars include important vegetable and forage crops grown worldwide, whereas the wild counterpart occurs naturally on European sea cliffs. Domestication and selection processes have led to phenotypic and genetic divergence between domesticated plants and their wild ancestors that inhabit coastal areas and are exposed to saline conditions. Salinity is one of the most limiting factors for crop production. However, little is known about how salinity affects plants in relation to domestication of . The objective of this study was to determine the influence of domestication status (wild, landrace or cultivar) on the response of different crops to salinity, as measured by seed germination, plant growth, water content and mineral concentration parameters at the seedling stage. For this purpose, two independent pot experiments were conducted with six accessions of , including cabbage (group ) and kale (group ), in a growth chamber under controlled environmental conditions. In both taxonomic groups, differences in domestication status and salt stress significantly affected all major process such as germination, changes in dry matter, water relations and mineral uptake. In the experiment, the domestication × salinity interaction significantly affected water content parameters and shoot Na allocation. At early stages of development, wild plants are more succulent than cultivated plants and have a higher capacity to maintain lower Na concentrations in their shoots in response to increasing levels of salinity. Different responses of domesticated and cultivated accessions in relation to these traits indicated a high level of natural variation in wild . Exclusion of Na from shoots and increasing succulence may enhance salt tolerance in exposed to extreme salinity in the long term. The wild germplasm can potentially be used to improve the salt tolerance of crops by the identification of useful genes and incorporation of these into salinity-sensitive cultivars.