Assessment of Salinity Tolerance in Greengram [Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek]

Abstract

Background: Greengram is one of the important and salt sensitive food legume crops with high nutritional quality. The area under salinity is increasing gradually due to various reasons like global warming, continues irrigation of bore well water and use of more organic fertilizers etc. Identification of salinity tolerant genotype in greengram is highly essential to improve the production and productivity. Salinity stress condition increases the absorption of more Na+ whereas the reduction of K+ absorption was noticed, which thus decreases the K+ /Na+ ratio. The first visible symptom due to salinity stress was retarded growth because of more uptake of Na+ ions leads to reduction of physiological activities. The next important character affected by salinity stress was radical growth. Methods: A total of 20 greengram genotypes were evaluated for salinity tolerance under four EC levels. Screening was done by roll towel method with two replications. The roll towels were placed in different buckets filled with different EC level of saline water and observations were recorded on the 8th day of germination. Result: The salinity level of more than 4.0 EC dsm-1 causes gradual reduction in radicle length and at 12.0 EC level almost in all the genotypes the radicle length was reduced to half as compare to control. The correlation analysis indicated that the plumule length and radicle length were the important criteria for selection to salinity tolerance. While observing the other growth parameters like plumule and radical length reduction, dry matter weight and salinity tolerance and susceptible index the genotypes IPMD 14-10 and VGG 17-038 were identified as more tolerant genotypes and DGGV 80, PUSA-BM5 and VBN 4 were more sensitive genotypes.