## 3 Results  
### Effect of Salt Stress on the Relationship between the Miotic Index and Cell Vacuolization  
The effect of different concentrations of salt used to examine mitotic activity showed a reduction in the number of dividing cells. The results showed a significant influence of the time of exposure to the saline solution and the concentration on the activity of mitotic divisions (\(p\) > 0.001) (Table 1). The highest mitotic index (MI) values were obtained in the salt-free treatment, obtaining 13.58%, 12.51% and 12.37% after 24, 48 and 72 h. On the other hand, at a concentration of 100 mM NaCl (V2), the mitotic index values were 9.95%, 8.20% and 7.30%. The lowest mitotic activity values were recorded at concentrations of 125 mM NaCl (V3), with 5.94%, 5.39% and 5.20%, plus 150 mM NaCl (V4), with 5.22%, 4.15% and 3.58%, over the 24-72 h exposure interval. Further analysis of the results of our studies revealed that the effect of salt stress also affected the percentage of other mitotic parameters (Table 2). A decrease in the probleme index (Ip) was observed with increasing salt concentration, from 7% in the control samples to just over 1.5% in the samples treated with 150 mM NaCl. Other mitotic indices such as the metaphase index (Im), anaphase index (Ia) and telophase index (It) also decreased with increasing salt concentration and exposure time. When analyzed over a period of 24 to 72 h, the highest values for the NaCl solution treatments were observed at 24 h, while the lowest values were observed at 72 h (\(p\) > 0.05) (Table 2). The results allow us to conclude that salt solutions cause stress in mitotic division and thus inhibit the growth and development of sunflower plants. The vacuolization phenomenon develops when biological material is exposed to salt stress, but similarly, as the vacuolization index increases, the mitotic index decreases. In our analysis, we observed that the mitotic index initially exceeded the vacuolization index in the control samples over all time intervals (\(p\) > 0.05) (Figure 2). On the other hand, we observed a significant difference between the vacuolization index and the mitotic index during the first treatment with V2 saline, where the vacuolization index increased as the exposure duration increased, showing significant differences between the values in the 24-72 h interval (\(p\) > 0.05), which was not the case in the control samples. Inverse values proportional to the vacuolization phenomenon were evidenced by the decrease in the mitotic index in the 24-72 h time interval. As the salt concentration increased, the mitotic index decreased and the vacuolization index increased (Figure 2). The vacuolization phenomenon is therefore closely linked to the decrease in the mitotic index and is a major factor in determining cell cytotoxicity. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c} \hline
**Variance Source** & **DF *** & **SS *** & **Mean Sq** & **F Value** & **Pr (>F)** \\ \hline Treatment & 3 & 3286 & 1380.3 & 405.54 & \(2\times 10^{-16}\) *** \\ Exposure time & 2 & 160 & 62.4 & 18.34 & \(1.55\times 10^{-8}\) *** \\ \hline Treatment \(\times\) exposure time & 6 & 18 & 6.8 & 1.984 & 0.0642 \\ \hline Residual & 288 & 1205 & 4.2 & & \\ \hline DF\(-\)degrees of freedom; SSsum of squares. The results were analyzed at significance levels of ***\(p\) < 0.001, ***\(p\) < 0.01 and *\(p\) < 0.05. & & \\ \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Analysis of variance of the combined effect of different salt concentrations and exposure times on the mitotic index. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Variant** & **Time h** & **NaCl-mM** & \begin{tabular}{c} **Total Number of Cells** \\ **Analysed \(\pm\) SE** \\ \end{tabular}