Abstract:
In Ethiopia, salt affected soils are prevalent in the Rift Valley and lowland areas. Beans,
which grow in different parts of Ethiopia, are salt sensitive. This experiment was
conducted with the objective of screening bean varieties: namely Tumsa, Gora and
Gachena for salt tolerance by the use of some agronomic traits such as days to seed
germination, seedling shoot and root length, seedling shoot and root fresh weight, seedling
shoot and root dry weight were measured in the laboratory experiment whereas days to
seed germination, plant height, number of branches per plant, number of leaves per plant,
days to flowering, number of flowers per plant, root length, shoot length, number of pods
per plant, number of seed per pod, and plant biomass were measured in the greenhouse
experiment. Three bean varieties were subjected to four salinity levels (0, 60, 120, and
180mM) under laboratory and greenhouse condition. The experimental design was
completely randomized design with three replications for both experiments. Data was
analyzed using SPSS version 16.0; statistical software and means were separated by LSD.
The ANOVA for treatments among varieties and their interaction was foundto be highly
significant (p<0.01) with regard to all traits. Results showed that salinity negatively
affected all measured parameters in a concentration dependent manner. Comparison
between the varieties showed that variety Tumsa performed better than the two varieties,
suggesting this variety is relatively salt tolerant. Whereas variety Gora is moderately salt
sensitive and variety Gachena is highly salt sensitive compared to the rest.
