Genetic Responds of Two Varieties of Amaranthus on Diffrerent Salinity Concentrarations Grown in Mubi, Nigeria

Abstract

The result of this study showed that the growth performance of the two varieties of amaranth were greatly reduced, in terms of number of leaves per plant in the saline treated plant exposed to the highest saline concentration compared to the control. Amaranthus cruentus had more number of leaves (6.63) than Amaranthus hybridus (5.67) and Amaranthus hybridus had higher survival rate than Amranthus cruentus(1.83). Although both test plant varieties responded to varying saline concentrations in various ways, both tends to show similar responds. Also, the number of days to germination increases with increased salinity concentrations the two amaranth varieties was both adversely affected by higher saline concentrations, where increased salinity concentrations caused reduction in shoot length Also, the leave breadth was better in the control and the plants with lower amounts of NaCl concentration(0.025 and 0.05), this implies that Amaranthus hybridus and Amaranthus cruenthus tolerate moderate salinity levels, while the plants with higher salinity concentrations (0.075,0.01,0.15) had leave breadth that were small, and eventually died because of high amounts of salt.