Studies on the sensitivity of some species and cultivars of lawn grasses on salinity with sodium chloride during the seed germination and first year of growth

Abstract

In the years 2005 - 2006 studies were conducted in a growth chamber and a vegetation hall which compared tolerance to NaCl salinity of seeds and plants of some lawn grasses. The effect of sodium chloride salinity on the germination of 4 species of grasses i.e. Lolium perenne cv. ‘Info’, Festuca rubra cv. ‘Audio’, Agrostis capillaris cv. ‘Niwa’, Poa pratensis cv. ‘Alicja’ and 4 cultivars of Lolium prenne - ‘Nira’, ‘Stadion’, ‘Ronija’, ‘Darius’ was studied. The grass seeds germinated in Petri dishes, in darkness, at the temperature of 24°C. Besides the control, 3 levels of salinity were used in the studies: 100, 200 and 300 mM NaCl. The obtained results demonstrated that the growing level of salinity in the environment significantly decreased the germinating speed, the number of the produced roots, the length of the longest root, and the length of the coleoptile in the seedlings of all studied grass species. Lolium perenne seeds tolerated salinity the best, and next - in a diminishing sequence - those were the seeds of Festuca rubra, Agrostis capillaris and Poa pratensis. However, the obtained data showed that tolerance to salinity of the analyzed cultivars of Lolium prenne decreased in the following sequence ‘Ronija’ > ‘Stadion’ > ‘Nira’ > ‘Darius’.

Keywords

• grasses
• nacl
• speed germination
• roots
• coleoptile
• dry mass
• sodium
• chlorine
• proline