Mohammed Moniruzzaman
Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI)
Title: Assessment of salinity tolerance capacity of promising tomato genotypes
Biography
Biography: Mohammed Moniruzzaman
Abstract
Soil salinity is one of the major environmental stresses which adversely affect almost every aspect of plant growth and metabolism resulting in considerable losses in crop productivity worldwide. Solving salt stress problem in agriculture cannot be overlooked, because of increasing demand for food. An experiment on tomato was conducted at the Net House Premises of Soil Science Division, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Bangladesh, during the winter season from Nov 2013 - Feb 2014. The major objective of the study was to assess the salinity tolerance ability of promising tomato genotypes for the identification of salt tolerant ones. Six levels (1.14, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 dS m-1) of irrigation water salinity were imposed to three genotypes of tomato V1 (BARI Hybrid Tomato 4), V2 (BARI Hybrid Tomato 5) and V3 (BARI Hybrid Tomato 8). Salinity was imposed as per treatments at the pre flowering stage two times at 45 and 55 DAS. The variety V3 gave the highest fruit yield (1.62 kg plant-1 equivalent to 55.25 t ha-1) along with better morphological characters. The same variety also gave significantly higher photosynthetic yield (0.64) and total sugar content (146.95 mg/gfw). The photosynthetic rate, transpiration rate, stomatal conductance and intercellular CO2 concentration was highest for the V3 as 14.56, 3.09, 0.25 and 199.75 mol m-2s-1, respectively. Potassium: Sodium ratio for V1, V2 and V3 was 3.43, 3.55 and 3.72, respectively, which indicates their adaptability under salt stressed situation to a considerable extent, whereas the performance of V3 was slightly better over other two varieties. Increasing levels of salinity resulted in lower SPAD values in leaves regardless of genotype. Photosynthetic rate, transpiration rate, intercellular CO2 concentration showed significant negative linear relationships with electrical conductivity of the irrigation water. Sodium salt stress showed antagonistic effect on the absorption N, P, K, Mg and S, while it was synergistic for Ca, although root Ca concentration showed declining trend. Considering all studied traits and yield potentiality, BARI hybrid tomato 8 can be regarded as salt tolerant to some extent