Determination of the Salinity Tolerance of Some Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) Varieties Under in vitro Conditions

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is one of the moderately sensitive field crops tos alt stress under in vitro and in vivo conditions. The salinity stress has significant and destructive effects on potato tuber production. Therefore, in vitro screening of potato genotypes for salt stress indicates a beneficial instrument as an alternative to field trials. The principal goal of this research was to reveal reaction in salinity stress tolerance of some potato cultivars using in vitro micropropagation technique. Single node explants of Van Gogh and Granola potato cultivars together with the 0.0, 250, 500, 750, 1000, 1500 and 2000 mg L-1 NaCl concentrations added MS media were used in the study. Explants were cultured under long-day photoperiod conditions (16 h light, 8 h dark) for 6 weeks. Observations such as days to the shoot initiation, explant regeneration rate, the length of shoots and radicles, the number of nodes and radicles, the length and width of leaves, stem tickness, fresh and dry weight of plantlets were recorded in the research. The highest explant regeneration rate was obtained from both 250 mg L-1 ve 750 mg L-1 NaCl including MS medium (90.63%). The results revealed that the longest plantlets was obtained on control media with no NaCl (28.71 cm), and Van Gogh gave longer plantlets (25.09 cm) compared to Granola (16.67 cm). The highest radicle number obtained on 250 mg L-1 NaCl including medium (73.38) and cultivar Van Gogh (76.18), however the longest radicles were determined on 2000 mg L-1 NaCl including medium (11.36 cm) and Van Gogh (9.45 cm). Findings presented here clearly indicated that although morphological characteristics of in vitro grown potato plantlets were affected by increasing NaCl concentrations, Van Gogh showed more tolerance to salinity environments.