Background: γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) bypasses the TCA cycle via GABA shunt, suggesting a relationship with respiration. However, little is known about its role in seed germination under salt conditions.

Results: In this study, exogenous GABA was shown to have almost no influence on mungbean seed germination, except 0.1 mM at 10 h, while it completely alleviated the inhibition of germination by salt treatment. Seed respiration was significantly inhibited by 0.1 and 0.5 mM GABA, but was evidently enhanced under salt treatment, whereas both were promoted by 1 mM GABA alone or with salt treatment. Mitochondrial respiration also showed a similar trend at 0.1 mM GABA. Moreover, proteomic analysis further showed that 43 annotated proteins were affected by exogenous GABA, even 0.1 mM under salt treatment, including complexes of the mitochondrial respiratory chain.

Conclusions: Our study provides new evidence that GABA may act as a signal molecule in regulating respiration of mungbean seed germination in response to salt stress.