Abstract

An experiment was conducted to investigate the interactive effect of salinity and seed priming on barely genotypes at the Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering (IBGE), Khyber Pakhtun Khwa Agricultural University Peshawar Pakistan. The experiment was carried out in completely randomized design (CRD) with three replications consisting of twelve barely genotypes (Haider-93, Soorab-96, Arabic Asward, NRB-37, Frontier-87, Jau-83, Balochistan-Local, NRB-31, KPK-Local, Sanober-96, Awarn-2002 and AZ-2006) at two seed conditions (seed priming with 30 mM NaCl or no seed priming) under four salinity levels (0, 50, 100 and 150 mM). The results revealed that seed priming and salinity had significantly (p≤0.05) affected all the parameters under study. However, the effect of seed priming was non significant (p>0.05) on shoot chlorophyll a content (mg g^-1 fresh weight) and root sugar content (mg g^-1dry weight). Salinity stress had adversely affected growth and biochemical parameters of barley genotypes, however, seed priming with NaCl had diminished the negative impact of salt stress. Maximum shoot dry weight plant^-1 (1.81 g), root dry weight plant^-1 (0.42 g), shoot K⁺ content (1.41 mg g^-1 dry weight), root sugar content (7.55 mg g^-1dry weight) were recorded in Balochistan-Local. Similarly, Haider-93 produced highest root K⁺ content (0.67 mg g^-1 dry weight), shoot sugar content (16.36 mg g^-1dry weight), shoot chlorophyll a content (3.44 mg g^-1 fresh weight) and shoot chlorophyll b content (1.78 mg g^-1 fresh weight). Maximum shoot Na⁺ content (1.20 mg g^-1) and root Na⁺ content (1.47 mg g^-1) was recorded in Frontier-87. Seed priming had significantly (P<0.05) enhanced all the aforementioned parameters. The positive effect of seed priming was more profound in Balochistan-Local followed by Haider-93 as compared to other genotypes.

Key words: Barely, salinity, seed priming, Na⁺, K⁺, chlorophyll a and b.