SALINITY STRESS AS AN ABIOTIC FACTOR AT GERMINATION STAGE ON DRY BEAN (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) CULTIVARS

Abstract

The study focused on germination parameters as the most critical stage of plant development in dry bean cultivars under different salt treatment. For two used cultivars (Akman-98, Karaman-2016) the data on germination percentage, mean germination time, seedling shoot length, seedling root length, seedling length and seedling vigor indexes were reached under the different salinity levels of irrigation water (0 mM, 25 mM, 50 mM, 100 mM, 150 mM, and 200 mM of NaCl) in Petri plates. The data indicates that these parameters could be used as screening the dry bean cultivars against salt stress levels. This study was carried out in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with a total of 12 treatments (6 salinity x 2 cultivars) for the germination and seedling data each comprising of three replicates. The results demonstrated that; i) From the overall observation of the germination characters, at 100 mM and over salt treatments showed decreasing in the germination percentage, the seedling length and the seedling vigor index in the mean of the cultivars, ii) Significantly decreasing in the seedling shoot length were observed in the mean of the cultivars at just after 25 mM and gradually at all salt concentrations, iii) Although the root length showed increasing in 25 and 50 mM treatments than the control plants, a sudden decrease occurred after 100 mM salt treatment in the mean of the cultivars and in each cultivars separately, iv) The mean germination time were sharply in increasing starting with 25 mM treatment in the mean of the cultivars, v) Except the seedling shoot length, in the mean of all the salt treatments between the cultivars did not show statistically differences in the calculated parameters, vi) Any correlation was found between the salt concentrations and the cultivars.