Effect of pre-treatment of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) seeds on seed germination and seedling growth under salt stress

As germination plays a dominant role in determining the final density of plants so it is one of the critical stages of plant growth cycle. Salinity decreases the seed germination and seedling emergence which is one of the main problems in saline areas. Seed priming technique improves germination and seedling emergence under different environment stresses. On the other side, salicylic acid plays a major role in regulation of many physiological processes like growth, development, germination and ion absorption of plants. The objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of seed priming in improving growth characteristics, seed germination, seedling vigor index of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), in response to 4 levels of NaCl (0, 50, 100 and 150 mM) and to 4 levels of priming by Salicylic acid (0, 10-4, 10-5 and 10-6 M). An experiment was conducted with three replications in research laboratory of Botany department, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra. The results showed that plumule length, radicle length, seedling length, plumule fresh weight, radicle fresh weight and seedling fresh weight were significantly (P<0.01) reduced by increasing salinity for unprimed seed (control) compared with primed seeds. Also, Salinity conditions reduced seed vigour index and seed germination percent. SA at 10-5 M had the maximum beneficial effect followed by 10-4 and 10-6 M in seed germination in both stressed and non-stressed conditions. SA had shown to exert a possible ameliorative effect under salt stress regarding seed germination testing.