The commit ca125b82b changed a lot of the variable handling in ob-perl, and it now will not accept tables as input. Below is an org doc with an example, the error message and a backtrace.
rick ----- * Can't use table as input #+name: t1 | 1 | #+begin_src perl :var t=t1 :results value $t #+end_src ** Error mapconcat: Wrong type argument: sequencep, 1 #+begin_example org-babel-perl--var-to-perl(1) mapconcat(org-babel-perl--var-to-perl (1) "") org-babel-perl--var-to-perl((1)) mapconcat(org-babel-perl--var-to-perl ((1)) "") org-babel-perl--var-to-perl(((1))) org-babel-perl--var-to-perl(((1)) t) #[(pair) "\301A@\"\207" [pair org-babel-perl--var-to-perl] 3]((t (1))) mapcar(#[(pair) "\301A@\"\207" [pair org-babel-perl--var-to-perl] 3] ((t (1)))) org-babel-variable-assignments:perl(((:comments . "") (:shebang . "") (:cache . "no") (:padline . "") (:noweb . "no") (:tangle . "no") (:exports . "results") (:results . "replace value") (:var t (1)) (:session . "none") (:hlines . "no") (:padnewline . "yes") (:result-type . value) (:result-params "value" "replace") (:rowname-names) (:colname-names))) org-babel-execute:perl("$t" ((:comments . "") (:shebang . "") (:cache . "no") (:padline . "") (:noweb . "no") (:tangle . "no") (:exports . "results") (:results . "replace value") (:var t (1)) (:session . "none") (:hlines . "no") (:padnewline . "yes") (:result-type . value) (:result-params "value" "replace") (:rowname-names) (:colname-names))) org-babel-execute-src-block(nil ("perl" "$t" ((:comments . "") (:shebang . "") (:cache . "no") (:padline . "") (:noweb . "no") (:tangle . "no") (:exports . "results") (:results . "replace value") (:var t (1)) (:session . "none") (:hlines . "no") (:padnewline . "yes") (:result-type . value) (:result-params "value" "replace") (:rowname-names) (:colname-names)) "" nil 0)) org-babel-execute-src-block-maybe() org-babel-execute-maybe() org-babel-execute-safely-maybe() run-hook-with-args-until-success(org-babel-execute-safely-maybe) org-ctrl-c-ctrl-c(nil) call-interactively(org-ctrl-c-ctrl-c nil nil) command-execute(org-ctrl-c-ctrl-c) #+end_example