Abstract
Seed germination and early seedling growth are the plant growth stages most sensitive to salt stress. Thus, the availability of poor-quality brackish water can be a big limiting factor for the nursery vegetable industry. The exogenous supplementation of gibberellic acid (GA3) may promote growth and vigor and counterbalance salt stress in mature plants. This study aimed to test exogenous supplementation through foliar spray of 10−5 M GA3 for increasing salt tolerance of tomato and sweet pepper seedlings irrigated with increasing salinity (0, 25, and 50 mM NaCl during nursery growth. Tomato and sweet pepper seedlings suffered negative effects of salinity on plant height, biomass, shoot/root ratio, leaf number, leaf area, relative water content, and stomatal conductance. The foliar application of GA3 had a growth-promoting effect on the unstressed tomato and pepper seedlings and was successful in increasing salinity tolerance of tomato seedlings up to 25 mM NaCl and up to 50 mM NaCl in sweet pepper seedlings. This treatment could represent a sustainable strategy to use saline water in vegetable nurseries limiting its negative effect on seedling quality and production time.
Highlights
Greenhouse production of container-grown transplants has become a typical practice for vegetable crops in many vegetable production areas of the world [1]
The effects of salt stress and gibberellic acid (GA3 ) treatment on transplant production were evaluated in a nursery trial carried out during autumn 2018 in a greenhouse situated at the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Forest Sciences (SAAF—University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy)
In a previous study [13], we found that salt tolerance of leaf lettuce and rocket grown in a floating system increased when GA3 was added to the nutrient solution
Summary
Greenhouse production of container-grown transplants has become a typical practice for vegetable crops in many vegetable production areas of the world [1]. Containerized vegetable transplant production is an extremely intensive agricultural practice as seedlings need to be watered and fertilized frequently, even daily, due to the limited volume of substrate explored by the young roots that can retain only small amounts of water and nutrients. Vegetable growers are facing more and more frequently the availability of poor quality water due to high salt content. This is an increasingly important problem worldwide as it could limit the growth of sensitive plants such as young vegetable seedlings and result in reductions of crop yield
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