Effect of Seed Size and Salinity on Germination and Vegetative Growth of Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Variety Imam

Abstract

To investigate the effect of seed size and salinity stress on the germination and vegetative growth of wheat variety Imam, a laboratory and a pot experiment were conducted during the winter season of 2016. The experiments were conducted at the Seed Laboratory of Agronomy Department and at the Nursery, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Khartoum, (Shambat). Seed size treatments were selected on the basis of seed diameter, and were categorized into three classes of small; medium and large.Salinity concentrations were: EC0 (control); EC2 (0.24 mM NaCl L-l); EC4 (0.28 mM NaCl L-l); EC6 (0.39 mM NaCl L-l); EC8 (0.41 mM NaCl L-l) and EC10 (0.59 mM NaCl L-l). The experiments were conducted using a completely randomized design with two replicates for the germination test and three replicates for the pot experiment. Data were collected on:germination percentage on the 4th and 8th day after planting; plant height; number of leaves per plant; leaf area; number of tillers per plant and dry matter yield. The data were statistically analyzed using ANOVA and mean separation using LSD. The results revealed that seed size class did not show significant (p ≤ 0.05) effect on germination percent of wheat. However, salinity significantly (p ≤0.05) affected germination at both readings. Small seed class registered higher germination at EC4 and EC10. For the pot experiment, the results revealed that seed size class did not have a significant (p ≤ 0.05) effect on the studied parameters. However, better performance was observed for the large seed size class as compared to the other seed size classes. Salinity had a significant (p ≤ 0.05) adverse effect on all measured growth parameters and reduced dry matter yield by 10.4 %, 11.7 %, 47.7% , 38.5 % and 72.2 % at EC2 and EC4, EC6, EC8 and EC10, respectively, as compared to EC0. Except for leaf number, most of the interactions between seed size and salinity were significant (p ≤ 0.05). Further research is neededto confirm the reported effect of salinity on growth and yield of wheat variety Imam.