EFFECTS OF IRRIGATION WATER QUALITY (DIFFERENT SALINITY LEVELS AND BORON CONCENTRATIONS) ON MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GRAFTED AND NON-GRAFTED EGGPLANTS

High yield cultivars with quite high resistance against pests and diseases, irrigation water salinity and deficit irrigation conditions are significant in plant production activities. Researches have been conducted also to improve the resistance of available cultivars. Since 1990s, researchers have tried to use low quality irrigation waters just because of deficit water resources and current trends in global warming and climate change. The basic target in all these researches is to reduce production costs and to improve quality and yields. Availability of low quality irrigation waters is a basic component of sustainable agricultural production. The present study was conducted in 40 liter pots under greenhouse conditions. Grafted and non-grafted eggplant seedlings were planted into these pots. Then, plants were irrigated with irrigations waters with different salinity levels (0.25, 1, 1.5, 2, 4, 6, 10 and 15 dS/m) and boron concentrations (0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64 ppm). In this way, effects of different irrigation water qualities on plant morphological characteristics were investigated