Responses of Maize Varieties to Salt Stress in Relation to Germination and Seedling Growth

A pot experiment was carried out at the Laboratory of Department of Agronomy, Hajee Mohamad Danesh Science and Technology University (HSTU), Bangladesh during 2016 to evaluate the response of maize varieties at germination and seedling growth stages under salt stress. The seeds of the BARI (Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute) developed four maize varieties viz. Barnali, Khoi Vutta, Mohor and BARI Maize 5 were placed in plastic pots (each of 25 cm length and 12 cm width) on sand bed irrigated with tap water (control), 100 and 200 mM NaCl salt solutions. It was replicated in thrice with completely randomized design (CRD). Salinity stress significantly affected the germination characters and seedling growth parameters of maize varieties. The germination percentages (GP) and germination rate (GR) reduced significantly with increasing salinity, and the variety Khoi Vutta showed the highest GP and GR followed by Barnali and Mohor showed the lowest GP and GR followed by BARI maize 5. Under high salinity level, seedling growths characteristics like shoot and root lengths, fresh and dry weight of shoot and roots reduced remarkably in the variety Mohor indicating salt susceptible while the minimum reduction of the aforementioned traits was observed in the variety Khoi Vutta demonstrating high salt tolerant variety. The studied varieties can be ranked on the basis of salt tolerance as Khoi Vutta > Barnali > BARI Maize 5 > Mohor from the experiment.