Germination and seedling growth responses of Sri Lankan grown Sesame/Thala (Sesamum indicum L.) for simulated drought conditions

I.A.J.K Dissanayake,S.M.W Ranwala,S.S.N Perera

doi:10.4038/jnsfsr.v47i4.9686

I.A.J.K Dissanayake, S.M.W Ranwala + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.4038/jnsfsr.v47i4.9686

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Abstract

The agriculture sector is often challenged by dry weather, thus a better understanding of growth responses of crops to changes in climate is imperative. However, drought responses of many economical crops are yet to be comprehensively studied. Therefore, this research was carried out to investigate the responses of 10 Sri Lankan grown sesame varieties/cultivars: Uma, Malee, Idal, Pokuru, Black-seeded sesame and its wild relatives, to reduced water availability during germination and seedling growth. Drought conditions were simulated in a laboratory with three different treatments [polyethylene glycol (PEG) 6000, mannitol and sodium chloride] at 0, - 0.25, - 0.5 and -1.0 MPa water potentials under complete randomised design with 10 replicates each having eight seeds per petri plate per variety/cultivar. The final germination percentage of sesame seeds after 10 days was calculated. Seedlings were further exposed to the same treatments and their root and shoot lengths were measured after 10 days. Germination was assessed using binary data analysis and the seedling data were subjected to ANOVA. Results revealed that the highest tension of PEG (-1.00 MPa) inhibited seed germination and the emergence of seedlings, while that of mannitol (-1.00 MPa) negatively affected seedling growth only (p

Highlights

With climate change, it is expected that drought conditions will increase in frequency and intensity in the coming years, severely affecting agriculture, especially rain-fed agriculture and threaten the food security of humans (IPCC, 2014)
A test of the full model against a constant-only model was statistically significant, indicating that the treatments and varieties reliably distinguished between germination responses (X2 = 5986, p < 0.001 with df = 99) with a 93 % concordant value
Our results showed that none of the seedlings of Wild1 and Wild3 sesame survived in -1.00 MPa imposed by mannitol indicating that they were highly susceptible

Summary

Introduction

It is expected that drought conditions will increase in frequency and intensity in the coming years, severely affecting agriculture, especially rain-fed agriculture and threaten the food security of humans (IPCC, 2014). Drought responses of major crops such as rice, wheat, barley, sorghum, and maize have already been extensively researched (Harris et al, 2007; Ali et al, 2013; Odabas et al, 2014; He et al, 2016; Ramya et al, 2016) and insights have been made to develop drought-resistant varieties. This article is published under the Creative Commons CC-BY-ND License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/). This license permits use, distribution and reproduction, commercial and non-commercial, provided that the original work is properly cited and is not changed in anyway

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