Abstract
Salinity which affected approximately 7% of the world’s total land area is one of the factors which reduce productivity of sorghum. Exploiting genetic variability to identify salt tolerant genotype is one of the strategies used to overcome salinity. Petri dish experiment was conducted to evaluate the response of eleven sorghum genotypes for NaCl salinity tolerance at germination and early seedling stages. The experimental treatments included five NaCl salinity levels (0, 2, 4, 8, and 16 dS m-1) and eleven sorghum genotypes. The experimental design was completely randomized design with three replicates. Data was analyzed using statistical analysis system (SAS) (version 9.0) statistical software. Germination rate, final germination percentage, seedling shoot length and seedling root length were measured. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) for treatments, genotypes and their interaction was found to be highly significant (p<0.001) with regard to all parameters. Genotype ICSV-111 showed greater salt tolerance during germination stages while Teshale and 76T1#23 were better salt tolerant during seedling growth stages. However, genotypes ESH-2 and 97MW6130 were found to be salt sensitive based on all parameters. All parameters measured showed to have an inverse relationship with increase in NaCl salinity levels. The study affirmed presence of wide genotypic variation among the sorghum genotypes for NaCl salt tolerance. Key words: Germination, NaCl, salinity tolerance, seedling growth, sorghum genotypes.
Highlights
Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) is the fifth most economically important crop among cereals in the world
Data for mean germination rate revealed that germination rate was reduced by 1, 2.6, and 38.2% due to 2, 4, 8 and dS m-1 salinity levels as compared to the control treatment, respectively
Genotype Meko followed by Teshale, Abshir and Gambella1107 gave significantly higher mean germination rate than the other genotypes in the control (Figure 1)
Summary
Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) is the fifth most economically important crop among cereals in the world. It is grown on approximately 44 million hectares of land (Prakash et al, 2010), in 99 countries (ICRISAT, 2009) with an annual production of 60 million tons (Iqbal et al, 2010). From the total 9.23 million hectares of crop area under cereals, sorghum occupies 17.55% of the cultivated land. 29.71 million quintals are produced each year in Ethiopia (CSA, 2010) It is a staple food crop on which lives of millions of poor Ethiopians depend. It has tremendous uses for the Ethiopian farmer and no part of this plant is wasted (Asfaw, 2007b)
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