MORPHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSES OF Moringa oleifera SEEDLINGS IN RESPONSE TO SALT STRESS

Abstract

Salt stress, resulting from increased soil salinity, poses a significant threat to agricultural productivity worldwide, including the growth and development of moringa plants. Understanding the responses of moringa to salt stress is crucial for developing effective strategies to mitigate the negative effects and improve plant resilience. A polybag experiment was conducted at the agroforestry farm of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka during May 2022 to August 2022 to examine the establishment of Moringa seedling under salt stress. This was a single factor experiment: Salinity. The factor had six (6) different levels of salinity i.e. T 0 ii

= 0 ds m -1 , T 1 = 3 dsm , T 3 = 9 ds m -1 , T 4 = 12 ds m -1 , and T 5 = 15 ds m -1 . The experiment was laid out on Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with six replications. Our results revealed that T 0

showed the best performance regarding germination percentage (93.33%), plant height (68.70 cm), number of leaves plant -1 (262.70), shoot length (56.5 cm), root length (12.20 cm), total fresh weight (14.84 g), shoot fresh weight (9.10), root fresh weight (5.7), total dry weight (2.10 g), shoot dry weight (1.46 g) and root dry weight (0.64 g). On the other hand, the least performance regarding germination percentage (0%) from T 5 . The growth performance was decreased with the increasing levels of salinity; (T 1 -1 >T 2 ) which further affect seed germination and seedling establishment of Moringa oleifera.