The salt solution is meant to lower the ice melting point hence keep most of the water from turning into ice even at zero degrees temperatures. The salts are dissolved in the water to form a salty solution that percolates the ground and reach plant roots. Because the salty water is hypertonic (more concentrated) to the cell cytoplasm of the plant roots, water is drawn from the plant by osmosis. This is the reversal of normal plant root absorption of water from the soil. This causes the plant root to wither and subsequently the whole plant to die. Remember in osmosis, water moves from the less concentrated solution to the more concentrated solution through a semipermeable membrane.
A couple of homologous chromosomes, or homologs, are a set of one maternal and one paternal chromosome that pair up with each other inside a cell during fertilization.
