Variation in phosphorus accumulation in groundnut cultivars as influenced by water salinity

Abstract

Soil salinity remains an obvious abiotic stress that changes the behavior of nutrient accumulation in crop plants. Phosphorus being a key element in determining crop growth and economic yield, its uptake in plant parts varies under saline condition. Hence an experiment was conducted to assess the changing phosphorus content in eight groundnut cultivars,were grown in a field trial having in-built soil salinity developed with 0.5, 2.0, 4.0 and 6.0 dSm-1 of saline irrigations (ECiw). Root-P was observed to have an increasing trend of accumulation upto 6.0 ECiw while leaf-P increased upto 4.0 ECiw with a concomitant rise in soil P. The cultivars TG 37A and GG 7 accumulated more leaf-P and root-P. However, across the cultivars the P-uptake was reduced when the applied ECiw was 6.0 dS m-1. Further, these plant-P parameters correlated with the yield and yield attributes of groundnut crop.