One of the applications of the tissue culture technique in plant improvement is the identification of cell lines which show salinity tolerance. Several authors were able to obtain saline stress-tolerant cell lines and show that mechanisms of tolerance to salts have a strong correlation between this phenomenon and a high macromolecule concentration in plant tissues. Callus obtained from embrionic axis of Phaseolus vulgarís cv. IAC carioca in solid medium, supplemented with 0 to 60 mM NaCl, as the salt treatment, were used. Callus harvesting was done on the 13th day, when they were processed for relative growth, protein, proline content and peroxidase acivity. The results show both, a decrease of the relative growth and of protein content in response to the NaCl treatment, as compared to controls. However, there was a significant increase on the proline content and on the peroxidase activity.
plant tissue culture; proline content; salt tolerance; peroxidase activity
