Improving salinity tolerance in chili by exogenous application of calcium and sulphur

Salinity drastically affects the productivity of vegetable crop plants. In this regard, Ca and S application can be helpful to improve the salinity tolerance in crop plants. Thus, an experiment was conducted to examine the improvement of salinity tolerance in chili by foliar application of calcium (Ca) and sulphur (S). The results showed that all the morphological (root/shoot fresh/dry weights and lengths, stem diameter, leaf area, number of leaves, number of flowers and fruits, fruit weight), physiological (photosynthesis rate, stomatal conductance) and biochemical (chlorophyll, root/shoot proline and glycine betain contents) parameters were reduced significantly (P <= 0.05) under saline environment. The foliar application of Ca at 20 or 35 mgL(-1) and S at 5 or 10g L-1 improved the morphological and physiological traits in chille plants subjected to salinity stress. It can be concluded that S at 10gL(-1) and Ca at 35 mgL(-1) can be used to enhance the salinity tolerance potential of chille plants.