INFLUENCE OF SALT STRESS ON SEED GERMINATION, GROWTH PERFORMANCE AND YIELD OF FABA BEAN (Vicia faba L.)

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.