In the current context of climate change, special attention should be paid to assuring the security of food and fruits. Lemon trees struggle to keep their physiological traits stable in the context of all the cumulated challenges originating from climate stress. Therefore, our aim was to assess two seed priming methods’ long-term effects on some physiological parameters of young lemon trees. The relative chlorophyll content reveals that hydropriming shows 26% increases from E1 to E6, similar to the control, while osmopriming has a 31% higher value at the beginning and after three years. Leaf stomatal density has 80% lower values due to osmopriming compared to the control, while hydropriming show 15% lower values. Leaf area development was slightly similar between treatments, with more leaves being developed after hydropriming treatments. Guard cell width has similar values for priming, with both being with 40% higher than that of the control. Lemon trees grown after osmotic stress have the highest mass percentages of magnesium and potassium in the leaves. Hydropriming promotes calcium oxalate accumulation and a high mass percentage of phosphorus. The percentage allocation of carbon as dry matter is 32% for osmopriming, significantly higher than for the other treatments. The quantum yield of photosynthetic electron transport is the only significant photosynthetic parameter for osmoprimed lemon young trees. Physiological techniques successfully enhanced the overall growth of three-year-old lemon trees, especially osmopriming treatment.
Stoian et al. (Sat,) studied this question.