Response of wheat genotypes to foliar application of amino acids as a salt stress relief agent under hydroponic conditions

Author(s) : Tahir Kamran, Anser Ali, Muhammad Sarwar, Wajad Nazeer, Alam Sher

Digital object identifier:

https://doi.org/10.52587/JAF030204

Abstract:

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L) is a major cereal crop moderately affected by salinity. Exogenous application of amino acids can improve the crop performance under salt stress. With the purpose to induce salt tolerance, 1% amino acids mixture (containing glutamic acid 8%, arginine 6%, proline 2.5%, lysine 2%, and serine 4%) solution was foliarly applied to eight wheat varieties Punjab-11, PK-13, Glaxy-13, Ujala-15, Gold-16, Johar-16, Anaaj-17, and Gandum-1 grown under saline (S1=10 dSm-1) and non-saline (S0=0.4 dSm-1) hydroponic culture of half strength Hoagland solution. A treatment without any foliar application to all wheat varieties was kept as control in Completely Randomized Design (CRD). Before the initiation of booting stage, plants were harvested and the evaluation was done on the basis of various morphological (root/shoot length, root/shoot fresh weight, root/shoot dry weight, root-shoot (weight) ratio, membrane stability index and biochemical parameters (sodium, potassium and chlorophyll contents in leaf). It is confirmed that the foliar application of amino acids significantly enhanced the salt tolerance in wheat. The wheat variety Pk-13 has been selected as salinity tolerant genotype because it has obtained the maximum shoot dry weight with higher Na+/k+ ratio as compared to Anaaj-17 which was classified as salt sensitive genotype because of attaining the minimum shoot dry weight and lowest Na+/k+ ratio.