ISSN: 2574-2701
Authors:
Javed Z, Riaz U*, Jamil M, Sardar A, Ahmed M, Anum W and Zulqadar SA
The presence of salts in soil, underground water and surface water sources is the main cause of salinity that exacts
economic and environmental issues like reduction in agriculture land, productivity, decline in quality of water and
destruction of ecosystems. Brinjal is an important vegetable crop that provides valuable nutrition to human diet. Salinity,
however is severely limiting its production in recent years. Therefore to evaluate the effect of salinity on different brinjal
genotypes a hydroponic experiment was conducted, in context to screen-out the salinity tolerant variety. For this
purpose, eight brinjal genotypes (Punjab Nagina, Twinkle, Black Beauty, Sandhya-F1, Adventa-303, Kalayan, Shamli and
Adventa-306) were sown under three salinity levels viz; 3.0, 4.5, 6.0 dS m-1 along with a control treatment (normal
irrigation water). The experiment was conducted in complete randomized design (CRD) factorial fashion with three
replications. Adequate nutrient source (half strength Hoagland solution) was used with constant pH and the recorded
data was analyzed statistically through LSD at 5% level of probability. The results showed that increasing levels of
salinity significantly decreased all growth and physiological parameters of brinjal genotype, except Sandhya-F1, which
showed maximum tolerance to salinity. It was attributed through minimum decrease in shoot length, root length, shoot
fresh weight, root fresh weight, shoot dry weight, root dry weight, carotenoid, chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b contents and
membrane stability index of Sandhya-F1. The salinity tolerance in rest of the varieties was in the order of Adventa-306 >
Twinkle > Punjab Nagina > Adventa-303 > Kalayan > Shamli > Black Beauty. So it may be suggested that brinjal variety
Sandhya-F1 should be adopted by the farmers to enhance brinjal production under salt affected conditions.
Keywords:
Brinjal; Genotypes; Salinity Stress; Tolerance