Greener Journal of Physical Sciences

Greener Journal of  Physical Sciences Vol. 2 (2), pp. 044-049, April, 2012.

ISSN: 2276-7851 © 2012 Greener Journals

Research Paper

Growth Performance and Comparison of Cowpea Varieties under Different Nacl Salinity Stresses

 

*Fazal Hadi¹, Farrukh Hussain¹ and Muhammad Arif²

 

¹Centre of Plant Biodiversity/Botanical Garden, University of Peshawar, Pakistan,

²Department of Agronomy, KPK Agricultural University, Peshawar, Pakistan

 

*Corresponding author’s E-mail: hadibotany@ yahoo. com

Abstract:

Salinity is one of the most important problems for the plant biodiversity. Salinity and water logging both cause great loses to the crops. The present research work was conducted to evaluate and compare the performance of three Pakistani cowpea varieties (Kulat-I, Kulat-II and Kulat-III) and one Australian variety (Ebony) under different NaCl salinity stresses. The experiment was conducted in pots under five NaCl salinity levels of 10 mM, 20 mM, 30mM, 40mM and 50 mM. The results showed that increasing salinity levels decreased the growth parameters of various varieties of cowpea. At 50 mM NaCl all the varieties exhibited extreme poor performance. Kulat-I performed well as compare to other varieties and displayed maximum % germination, plant height, leaves plant^-1, pods plant^-1, seeds pod^-1 and showed minimum days to germination and flowering at all levels of NaCl.

 

Key words: Cowpea varieties, NaCl salinity and growth performance.

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