EFFECT OF DIFFERENT LEVELS OF SALINITY ON GROWTH AND YIELD OF RICE

Abstract

A pot experiment was conducted at the net house of the Department of Soil Science at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka-1207. During boro rice growing season (December to April) of the year of 2019-2020 to know the effect of different levels of salinity on growth and yield of rice. The experiment was conducted using seven salinity levels with sodium viz. T 0 = Control, T I = 2 dSm -1 NaCl Salt, T 2 = 4 dSm NaCl Salt, T 3 1 = 6 dSm -1 NaCl Salt, T 4 = 8 dSm -1 NaCl Salt, T 5 = 10 dSm -1 NaCl Salt, T 6 NaCl Salt. The experiment was carried out following Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) having one factor with three replications. The results on the effect of morphological characters indicated that plant height; number of tillers, leaf length, leaf breath, effective tiller, number of non-effective tiller, total dry matter weight, panicle length, thousand seed weight and grain yield were significantly influenced by salinity and sodium. All the measured morphological parameters were found highest in nonsaline control treatment. But the parameters gradually declined in 2 and 12 dSm salt treatment. However, sodium supplementation greatly mitigated the damaging effect of salt for the growth, development and yield of BRRI dhan47. But the mitigation effect was more prominent at low salinity stress (2 dSm -1 ) compared to the higher stress (12 dSm -1 ). Considering above facts, it can be concluded that the yield of BRRI dhan47 was gradually decreased by the increase of salinity levels and this reduction rate was decreased by exogenous supply of sodium. The best results were mostly found at T 1

treatment, which indicates that sodium has important roles in different physiological and metabolic processes of plants. When plants are subjected to salt stress then sodium played a crucial role to ameliorate stress condition.