Morphophysiological and yield attributes of groundnut varieties under different salinity stress conditions

The study sought to evaluate the response of three groundnut genotypes (Binachinabadam-3, Dacca-1 and Zhingabadam) to various salt concentrations (D-0 - Control, D-1 - 2.5 dS/m, D-2 - 5.0 dS/m, D-3 - 7.5 dS/m, D-4 -10.0 dS/m, D-5 - 12.5 dS/m) through observation of morphological and physiological characters. Based on relative performance of yield contributing characters and nutrient contents of leaves and stem, Binachinabadam-3 emerged to be a tolerant variety and based on root shoot characters, Dacca-1 appeared as tolerant while Zhingabadam always performed as sensitive variety. Salinity treatments had most adverse effects at flowering stage and followed the trend of sensitivity as flowering stage > vegetative stage> pre sowing stage > pod filling stage. All varieties were found to be tolerant up to salinity level of 7.5 dS/m.