Evaluation of possibly of forage sorghum production in saline condition with CaCO3 application
Subject Areas : Agroecology Journal
1 -
Keywords:
Abstract :
Saline water and soil area‘s extent every year and forage need is going up. Forage sorghum has a high potential for yield and Ca2+ has an important role in plant tolerance to salinity. For determining Ca2+ level effects on sorghum tolerance to salinity in different growth stages, an experiment was conducted in glass house. Two forage sorghum cultivars (KFS3 and Jumbo) were evaluated in five water salinity levels (0, 50, 100, 150 and 200 mM NaCl) and four levels of CaCO3 (0, 50, 100 and 150 kg/ha) in perlite filled pots in 3 replicates. Increasing salinity decreased plant height, leaf area, leaf, stem, shoot and root dry weight, biomass, shoot/root ratio, leaf ratio and leaf/stem ratio, but increasing CaCO3 applying increased plant height, leaf area, shoot/root ratio, leaf/stem ratio in all salinity levels in cultivars. Applying CaCO3 helped cultivars to improve shoot dry weight and biomass. Increasing rate in all attributes except plant height and leaf area in KFS3 was higher than Jumbo. KFS3 has higher potential than Jumbo to revenue Ca+ in non-saline condition. Forage yield increase in saline condition and applying CaCO3 in comparison without applying CaCO3 in KFS3 was 72% and in Jumbo was 112%, respectively. This showed that applying CaCO3 could improve forage yield in saline condition.