The role of silicon and salt stress in some vegetative traits and mineral content of mint plant Mentha piperita L.

The experiment was carried out during agricultural season 2021, to study the effect of adding two types of silicon on the vegetative growth characteristics and mineral content of mint plant grown under the salt stress. The experiment was designed using Randomized Complete Block Design RCBD as a factorial experiment with two factors and three replicates, each replicate contains 9 experimental units, each unit consists 3 pots. The first factor included adding two types of silicon oxide as well as the comparison (S0 control, S1 nano-silicon, and S2 normal silicon); the second factor is salt stress included adding pure NaCl in three concentrations, (N0 0 g L-1, N1 0.45 g L-1and N2 1.45 g L-1). The results of study showed that there are significant differences caused by the experiment factors in number of lateral branches, number of leaves, and total leaf area, as the treatment S2N2 outperformed significantly with highest value of branches number, leaves number, and total leaves area which were 8.60 branches plant-1, 286.80 leaves plant-1, 1211.5 cm2 plant-1 respectively compared with control S0N0 which gave the lowest values; 7.10 branches plant-1, 182.90 leaves plant-1, 643.3 cm2 plant-1 for the same traits. S2N0 treatment was significantly superior in mineral content of NPK in leaves and gave the highest percentages of N 3.30%, P 0.5550%, K 1.96% compared with S0N2 treatment with the lowest percentages of N 2.90%, P 0.4283%, K 1.81%.