SALINITY TOLERANCE OF FOUR WINTER VEGETABLES

Abstract

A pot experiment was conducted with four winter vegetables to assess the salinity tolerance ability of four selected crops viz. tomato, brinjal, radish and turnip. Four salinity levels viz. T 0 (no salinity; control), T ii 1 (3 dSm

(6 dSm -1 NaCl) and T 3 (9 dSm -1 NaCl) were used. The experiment was conducted in Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three replications during the period from November 2018 to February 2019. Different data on growth, yield contributing parameters and yield were collected and analyzed statistically. For all test crops (tomato, brinjal, radish and turnip), control treatment T (no salinity) showed best performance on all the studied parameters. But considering salinity treatments significant influence was found on all growth and yield parameters and also on nutrient content in plant shoot. Results revealed that T 0 3 (9 dSm -1 NaCl) treatment showed lowest growth characters and yield of tomato (1.87 kg plant -1 -1 NaCl), T ) and brinjal (0.65 kg plant ) followed by T 2 (6 dSm -1 NaCl) compared to T 0 (no salinity) and T

NaCl) (3.78 and 3.17 kg plant -1 , respectively in tomato and 1.34 and 1.10 kg plant -1 , respectively in brinjal). Radish and turnip had low salt tolerance capacity and with the salinity levels of T 2 (6 dSm -1 NaCl) and T

NaCl), death occurred at 40 and 30 DAT, respectively. Results also revealed that among the selected crops, radish and turnip was more sensitive to salinity stress and death occurred with higher salinity. So, it can be concluded that among four winter vegetables viz. tomato, brinjal radish and turnip; tomato and brinjal showed more tolerance to salinity compared to radish and turnip.