Physiological Indices for Salt Tolerance of Lipo-Chitooligosaccharide Primed Maize

Abstract

Salinity has a range of negative effects on germination and early seedling growth. Lipo-chitooligosaccharide are organic compounds, which are produced by Rhizobium and play an important role in growth, development and yield of crops and are becoming popular in the field of agriculture. In order to study the effect of priming with Lipo-chitooligosaccharide (LCO) on germination and growth of corn under saline conditions, a completely randomized design experiment in factorial arrangement was conducted. Treatments comprised of 5 levels of salinity (0, 2, 4, 6 and 8 dSirr1) and two priming (priming with LCO and non priming). Results showed that the salinity and priming had significantceffects (p<0.05) on stress tolerance indices of shoot length, root length stress, root volume, root dry weight and fresh leaves of maize. The increase in salinity up to 8 dSm^negatively influenced all physiological indices and the amounts of reduction for the mentioned traits were 31, 46, 83 and 49 %, respectively, as compared with the control. Seed priming with LCO compensated the negative effects of salinity on stress indices and all the physiological indices were positively responded to the treatment of LCO priming. Results showed that seed priming with LCO can be considered as salinity.