The alteration of germination percentage and leaf stomatal features of black cumin (Nigella sativa L.) subjected to drought and salinity stresses.

Subject Areas : Developmental biology of plants and animals , development and differentiation in microorganisms

Shiva Aghajanzadeh Gheshlaghi ¹ , Maryam Peyvandi ² , Ahmad Majd ³ , Hosein Abbaspour ⁴

1 - Department of Biology< Faculty of Biological Science, Islamic Azad University, Tehran North Branch
2 - Department of Biology Faculty of Biological Science, Islamic Azad University, Tehran North Branch
3 - Department of Biology Faculty of Biological Science, Islamic Azad University, Tehran North Branch
4 - Department of Biology Faculty of Biological Science, Islamic Azad University, Tehran North Branch

Received: 2020-09-06 Accepted : 2020-12-23 Published : 2021-08-23

Keywords: Salinity, Germination percentage, Stomata, black cumin, drought,

Abstract :

Black cumin (Nigella sativa L.) as an herbal plant with high medicinal and economical usage, belongs to Rannunculaceae family. Due to the economic and medicinal importance of this plant and the seriousness of salinity and drought problems in Iran, in this study, the effect of salinity and drought stress on germination percentage and stomatal changes was investigated. The experiment was performed based on completely randomized design with three replications in the pot condition. To create different levels of drought and salinity, two days/ three days of drought and 30, 60 mM NaCl were used respectively. Germination percentage was recorded daily by placing 10 seeds in Petri-dish. Leaf stomata traits were studied using a light microscope two months after treatment. Variance analysis results showed that increasing drought and salinity stress reduced germination percentage. Drought stress also had a greater effect on reducing the size of the pore so that the diameter and the length of the pore showed a significant decrease and the pores were elongated, which shows the effect of dry stress on the closing stomata. Also, high salinity stress (60 mM NaCl) caused a significant increase in pore width and had no significant effect on other stomatal characteristics. The applied drought and salinity stresses did not show a significant increase in the number of stomata. According to the stomatal reaction in different levels of draught stress rather than salinity, it could be indicated the higher sensitivity of this plant to drought treatments.