Effect of Salinity on Germination and Seedling Growth of Turf Grasses

Environmental stresses, such as salinity can play an important role in disturbing different stages of plant growth, development, and especially seed germination in arid and semiarid regions in Iran. Turf grasses are highly dissipation in areas associated with saline soils and/or saline irrigation water. In order to study the effects of salinity on turf grasses germination, an experiment was conducted in factorial arrangement based on completely randomized design with three replications. Ten bulks of turf grasses were evaluated in four levels of salt treatment in Department of Agriculture in Isfahan University of Technology.These seeds included Bromus tomentolus (Semirom), Agropyron deserterom (Tabriz), Secal sp (Feraidonshahr), Stippa barbata (Mote), Agropyron sp (Semirom), Sorghum halopance (Isfahan), Agropyron elongatum (Hamedan), Bromus tomentolus-(Feraidonshahr), Hordeum morinum (Semirom), Secal sp (Pheraidan) that collected from different regions of Iran. Salt treatments were, 0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2 percent of NaCl solutions (Equivalent to EC of 7.8, 15.6, 23.4 and 31.2 dS/m) and H2O as control. Results showed that germination indices between bulks were significantly different (at 1% level). Increasing salinity caused a significant decrease in germination percentage and delayed mean germination time. Based on the percentage of germination and germination rate, Secale sp (Feraidonshahr) and, Bromus tomentolus (Semirom), had the highest and the lowest tolerances, respectively