Abstract
ABSTRACT Saline irrigation water at high levels causes disturbance in the growth of more sensitive plants. The objective of this research was to evaluate the initial growth of Pityrocarpa moniliformis seedlings under different electrical conductivity in irrigation water through physiological and biochemical analyses. The experiment was conducted in a greenhouse with five water electrical conductivities (0.5, 2.0, 4.0, 6.0 and 8.0 dS m-1) and four repetitions of 20 plants each, arranged in a randomized block design. Application of the treatments with irrigation water containing NaCl began at 30 days after sowing. To determine the behaviour of the species, the following variables were analysed: stem diameter, plant height, number of leaves, leaf area, Dickson quality index, shoot dry mass, root dry mass and total dry mass, as well as the biochemical variables, such as the concentrations of total soluble sugars, free proline and chlorophylls a and b. The increase in irrigation water salinity hampered the growth of P. moniliformis seedlings, with electrical conductivity of 0.5 dS m-1 being the limit for maximum production. The results also indicated that the deleterious effects of salt stress on P. moniliformis seedlings variables increase in concentrations of proline, total soluble sugars and betaine glycine.
Highlights
Drought and soil salinity are the main limiting factors in arid and semiarid regions for plant establishment (Sahito et al, 2013)
Sowing was performed in polyethylene plastic bags (1.2 L), using as substrate soil collected on the UAECIA campus, Macaíba, RN, Brazil, and the chemical analyses are presented in Table 1, which shows the initial analysis of the substrate and the analyses at the end of the experiment, according to the treatment
The analysis of variance indicates that there were significant effects on plant height (PH), number of leaves (NL), shoot dry mass (SDM), root dry mass (RDM), total dry mass (TDM) (p ≤ 0.01) and on stem diameter (SD), leaf area (LA) and Dickson quality index (DQI) (p ≤ 0.05), indicating that salinity has a direct influence on the initial development of P. moniliformis seedlings (Table 2)
Summary
Drought and soil salinity are the main limiting factors in arid and semiarid regions for plant establishment (Sahito et al, 2013). It causes damage to the plant due to excess ions and water deficit (Taiz et al, 2017), which leads to reduction of plant growth and turgor pressure and causes changes in cell metabolism (Thalmann & Santelia, 2017) Plants remobilise their reserves to release energy, sugars and derived metabolites (Rodrigues et al, 2018). Salt-resistant plants of the ‘Caatinga’ ecosystem can be used to reclaim degraded areas. In this context, the choice of species can determine the success of commercial, landscape and reforestation projects (Dantas et al, 2018). Recent studies carried out on forest species have highlighted promising results for their use in these environments (Leal et al, 2015; Leal et al, 2019; Lopes et al, 2019)
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