Polyamines play important roles in plant tolerance to environmental stress. With the aim of investigating the possible involvement of putrescine (Put) in salt-tolerance mechanisms in vegetable soybean roots, exogenous Put (10 mmol L-1) and its biosynthetic inhibitor D-arginine (D-Arg) (0.5 mmol L-1) were added to nutrient solution when vegetable soybean (Glycine max L. cv. Huning 95-1) seedlings were exposed to 100 mmol L-1 sodium chloride (NaCl). The results showed that Put ameliorated but D-Arg aggravated the detrimental effects of NaCl on plant growth and biomass production. Under NaCl stress, levels of free, soluble conjugated and insoluble bound types of Put in roots of vegetable soybean were reduced, whereas those of free, soluble conjugated, and insoluble bound types of spermidine (Spd) and spermine (Spm) were increased. Exogenous Put eliminated the decrease in Put but promoted the increase of Spd and Spm. However, these changes could be reversed by D-Arg. Under NaCl stress, activities of arginine decarboxylase (ADC), S-adenosylmethionine decarboxylase (SAMDC), diamine oxidase (DAO), and polyamine oxidase (PAO) were induced, with exogenous Put promoting and D-Arg reversing these changes. Furthermore, NaCl stress decreased activities of antioxidant enzymes. Exogenous Put alleviated but D-Arg exaggerated these effects of NaCl stress, resulting in the same changes in membrane damage and reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. These results indicated that Put plays a positive role in vegetable soybean roots by activating antioxidant enzymes and thereby attenuating oxidative damage.

Faba bean (Vicia faba L.), one of the most important legumes in the world, evolved different types of cultivars due to its partial cross-pollination. The development of simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers from expressed sequence tags (EST) provided a useful tool for investigation of its genetic diversity. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the genetic diversity of faba bean from China and Europe using EST-SSR markers. 5 031 faba bean ESTs from the NCBI database were downloaded and assembled into 1 148 unigenes. A total of 107 microsatellites in 96 unigenes were identified, indicating that merely 8.36% of sequences contained SSRs. The most abundant SSR within faba bean was tri-nucleotide repeat motif, and among all the tri-nucleotide repeats, the motif AAG/CTT was the most abundant type. Based on these results, 11 EST-SSR markers were used to assess the genetic diversity of 29 faba bean cultivars from China and Europe with two to three alleles per locus. The polymorphism information content value ranged from 0.0644 to 0.4278 with an average of 0.2919. Principal coordinate analysis (PCA) and phylogenetic clustering based on these 11 EST-SSR markers distinguished these cultivars into different groups. The results indicated that faba bean in China had a narrow genetic basis, and the additional sources of genetic cultivars/accessions should be introduced to enhance the genetic variability. The results of this study proved that the EST-SSR marker is very effective in evaluation of faba bean germplasm.