Melatonin alleviates photoinhibition in cucumber seedlings by modulating partitioning of absorbed excitation energy in photosystem Ⅱ

Abstract

Low temperatures are one of the most significant abiotic factors limiting crop growth and development with increasing losses in the agricultural sector resulting from early frosts in the fall, freezing temperatures in the winter, and sudden cold spells in the late spring (Hu et al. 2010, Cooper et al. 2018, Wang et al. 2019b). Sudden chilling causes a number of serious metabolic disorders in plants, with one of the most significant being a decrease in the rate of photosynthesis. Even if more suitable temperatures prevail immediately after a chilling event, it still takes