Seed Germination and Vegetative Growth of Petunia (Petunia hybrida) Genotypes to Salt Stress

Abstract

Salinity is a brutal threat to sustainability of crop production and exhibits injurious effect on major plant processes including protein synthesis, cell division and photosynthetic activity. Germination and early growth of plants are most susceptible to salinity effect in comparison to other growth stages. In this context, the seed emergence and early vegetative growth of flowers needs to be tested properly. The pot based study was conducted in Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three replicates at Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam. The goal of this investigation was to explore the performance of petunia plants to salt stress environment at early growth stage.  Two petunia varieties (V1= Prism blue, V2= Hala lop petunia rose) were evaluated against six levels of salt stress (T1 = Canal irrigation water [Control], T2 = 3 dS m-1, T3 = 5 dS m-1, T4 = 7 dS m-1, T5 = 9 dS m-1, T6 = 11 dS m-1).The results showed that there was an inverse effect of salt stress on all the traits examined and with each increased level of salinity in irrigation water; the values of petunia plant traits were significantly decreased. The petunia grown in pots given only canal water (control) revealed better performance for germination and growth attributes. It was further noted that that salt stress up to 3 dS m-1 level was generally tolerated by petunia. Among petunia varieties, Hala lop petunia rose performance was better and showed relative tolerance to salt stress over Prism blue, but in most cases the differences were insignificant (P>0.05).