Germination response of wild barley (Hordeum spontaneum Koch.) to salt and drought stress in different concentration of sodium chloride and polyethylene glycol 6000

Hosseini, Mojtaba; Zamani, Gholam Reza; Khazaei, Masoud

doi:10.22077/escs.2009.53

Germination response of wild barley (Hordeum spontaneum Koch.) to salt and drought stress in different concentration of sodium chloride and polyethylene glycol 6000

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Mojtaba Hosseini ¹

Gholam Reza Zamani ²

Masoud Khazaei ³

¹ Former MSc. Student of Weed Science, Faculty of Agriculture, the University of Birjand, Iran

² Faculty Member, Faculty of Agriculture, the University of Birjand, Iran

³ MSc. Faculty of Agriculture, University of Birjand, Iran

10.22077/escs.2009.53

Abstract

In order to study the germination response of wild barley (Hordeum spontaneum Koch.) seeds to osmotic and matric potential due to sodium chloride and polyethylene glycol 6000, two separate experiments were carried out based on completely randomized design with five replications in controlled environment. Osmotic and matric potential had five Levels (0, -0.3, -5, -10 and -15 bars). Results indicated that germination rate, germination percentage and also weight of radicle, weight of plumule, weight of seedling, radicle/plumule weight ratio, length of radicle, length of plumule and radicle/ plumule length ratio, were decreased significantly as stress intensity increased. Drought stress had more inhibitory effects on germination rate and percentage and -15 bar caused complete failure in germination. Effect of drought stress was more pronounced on length of radicle and plumule compared with the effects of salinity. In both drought and salinity stresses, percentage reduction for plumule length was higher than radical length which indicate the higher sensitivity of this trait to drought and salinity stress.

Keywords

Drought stress

Germination

Osmotic potential

salinity stress