INDUCTION OF SALT TOLERANCE CAPABILITY IN WHEAT (Triticum aestivum L.) THROUGH HYDROGEN PEROXIDE (H2O2 ) PRIMING

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at the Laboratory of Department of Agronomy, Sher-eBangla

Agricultural University (SAU), Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka-1207 during the period from October 2016 to December 2016. Three different experiments were conducted in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with five replications. Three wheat genotypes namely- ESWYT 5, ESWYT 6, and BARI Gom 28 were used as test crop and different priming chemicals such as of H 2 O and distilled water were utilized for chemical and hydro priming and NaCl was used to induce salt stress. The data on germination parameters of wheat like germination percentage and growth parameters like root length, shoot length, dry weight and vigor index were reviewed. Data were analyzed using a computer software MSTAT-C. The significance of difference among the treatments means was estimated by the Least Significant Difference (LSD) at 1% level of probability. The first experiment was carried out to find out the effect of different concentrations of H 2 O 2 2 on germination and growth behavior of three wheat genotypes (ESWYT 5, ESWYT 6 and BARI Gom 28) without any stress condition. It was found that ESWYT 5 showed the highest rate of germination (93.40%), shoot length (162.40 mm), root length (146.20 mm), shoot dry weight (0.04220g), root dry weight (0.03480g), relative water content (93.08%), water retention capacity (20.80), coefficient of velocity of germination (17.66) and vigor index (253.90) when the seeds were primed with different concentrations 0ml, 2ml, 4ml, 6ml ,8ml and 10 ml of H 2 O O solution in 24 hours. The second experiment was carried out to optimize the priming time on the germination and growth behavior of wheat genotypes. It was found that ESWYT 5 primed with 2ml H 2 O 2 2 for 9 hours gave the highest germination rate (94.20%), shoot length (169.30 mm), root length (146.0 mm), shoot dry weight (0.04340g), root dry weight (0.03820g), relative water content (91.14%), water retention capacity (17.76), coefficient of velocity of germination (18.08) and vigor index (303.1). In the third experiment germination and growth behavior of primed seeds of wheat genotypes (ESWYT 5, ESWYT 6 and BARI Gom 28) under 5 different salt (NaCl) concentrations (0, 5, 10, 15, 20 dSm -1 ) were evaluated. It was observed that highest germination rate (93.60%), shoot length (151.70 mm), root length (127.5 mm), shoot dry weight (0.04480g), root dry weight (0.03580g), relative water content (92.92%), water retention capacity (15.57), coefficient of velocity of germination (17.52) and vigor index (264.1) were obtained from ESWYT 5 when the primed seeds are placed without salt. But under salinity stress, the highest germination rate (91.80%), shoot length (143.0 mm), root length (118.10 mm), shoot dry weight (0.04140g) and root dry weight (0.03220g), relative water content (86.50%), water retention capacity (14.18), coefficient of velocity of germination (17.27) and vigor index (239.80) were achieved from ESWYT 5 under primed seeds placed with 5 dSm -1 .There were a slow reduction observed with the increasing of salt concentration from 0 to 20 dSm -1 .The result of the study suggest that exogenous H 2 O 2 application effectively alleviated the adverse effect of salt stress.