*4.8. Hormonal Applications and Abiotic Stresses Treatments*

For hormonal treatments the plantlets were treated with 50 µM methyl jasmonate (MeJA), 5 mM salicylic acid (SA) and 0.57 mM ABA solution [90]. Plantlets were kept at 28 ◦C in condition of 16 h light/8 h dark photoperiod and samples were collected at 0, 1, 3, 6, 12, 24 and 48 h post treatment (hpt). For abiotic stresses, some pepper seedlings were exposed to low temperature (6 ◦C) in chamber and others separately treated with 300 mM both NaCl and mannitol for 0, 1, 3, 6, 12, 24 and 48 hpt [72]. The samples were directly frozen in liquid nitrogen after harvesting and saved at −80 ◦C for RNA extraction. The experiments were carried out in three biological replicates.
