Author(s)

Lucky Akter¹, Oli Ahmed Fakir², Md. Khairul Alam³, Mahbub Ul Islam³, Priyanka Chakraborti⁴, Md. Jahangir Alam³, Md. Harunur Rashid⁵, Mahfuza Begum¹, Md. Abdul Kader¹

¹Department of Agronomy, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh, Bangladesh.
²Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, ARS, Satkhira, Bangladesh.
³Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Gazipur, Bangladesh.
⁴Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, On-Farm Research Division, Patuakhali, Bangladesh.
⁵Global Centre for Environmental Remediation (GCER), University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia.

Germination of seeds and growth of seedling respond to seed priming as priming can guard the damage of salinity stress. A study conducted in the net house of the Department of Agronomy, BAU, Mymensingh during the period from November 2012 to April 2013 investigated the ameliorative effect of seed priming on seed germination and seedling attributes of maize under various salinity stress conditions. The experiment consisted of five seed priming and four salinity levels (NaCl) and laid out in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three replications. Seed germination and seedling attributes of maize varied due to salinity stress and priming. The highest seed germination (95.7%) was recorded when no stress was imposed under hydropriming (48 hours). The germination of seeds performed even well (92.3%) when treated with hydropriming (48 hours) and NaCl@0.25 dS·m^-1 which was followed by hydropriming (24 hours) under no salinity imposed and NaCl@0.25 dS·m^-1 salinity. Hydropriming for 48 hours without salt stress performed the best on number of leaves seedling^-1 (8), shoot length (28.2 cm), root length (14.5 cm), fresh weight (100.8 g) and dry weight of seedling (50.3 g). The germination and seedling growth parameters were reduced with the increase in salinity levels irrespective of priming while all seed priming treatments showed ameliorative effects. However, reduction in seed germination and seedling attributes were minimal with hydropriming for 48 hours. The results revealed that priming of maize seeds could be used for amelioration of salinity stress and hydropriming for 48 hours appeared as the best seed priming treatment.

Germination, Halopriming, Hydropriming, Osmopriming, Seedling Attributes

Akter, L. , Fakir, O. , Alam, M. , Islam, M. , Chakraborti, P. , Alam, M. , Rashid, M. , Begum, M. and Kader, M. (2018) Amelioration of Salinity Stress in Maize Seed Germination and Seedling Growth Attributes through Seed Priming. Open Journal of Soil Science, 8, 137-146. doi: 10.4236/ojss.2018.85011.