IMPACT OF SALINITY STERESS ON SEED GERMINATION AND SEEDLING GROWTH ON SELECTED VARIETY OF TOMATO (LycopersiconesculentumMill.)

Soil salinity is a major environmental issue threatening agricultural productivity worldwide. Therefore, screening for salt tolerant varieties is the most important and overcomes the salinity problems and treated with different saltconcentration.thus, this study aimed to study five selected tomato varieties collected from Awash Malkasa agriculture. An experiment was conducted at xii Haramaya University School of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology laboratory and a greenhouse experiment to evaluate tomato varieties in response to four different salinity treatments. The experiment was set using a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three replications. Data was collected on germination percentage, seedlings shoot length, seedlings root length, and seedlings shoot fresh weight, seedling root fresh weight, seedling shoot to root ratio in laboratory as well as greenhouse experiment. The results revealed that varieties had highly significantly (p≤0.01) effected on the growth parameters at different salt concentration. The degree of reduction of germination % was significantly varied with different salt concentrations (0.05). Significant reduction in germination percentage occurred at 120 and 180mM respectively. Awash and Dera varieties showed the highest seed germination performance in treatments. The highest and lowest shoot lengths were observed in Galano and Shante seedlings respectively, while in 120mM and 180mM salinity the shoot length was highly reduced. The highest root length (8.24 cm) was found in the Awash variety and the lowest (6.96cm) in the Shante variety at 60mM salinity level. At 180mM NaCl level, the lowest root length mean value is recorded in the Melkasa seedling variety (3.11cm) and the highest is in the Dera variety (4.41cm). The increment in salinity level caused a substantial reduction in fresh shoots and fresh root weight. From all tomato varieties considered, the highest mean shoot and root fresh weight was recorded in Awashvariety. As the salt concentration increased, there were corresponding decreases observed in shoot to root ratio in Awash, Dera and Galano. In most cases, Awash and Dera seed varieties record the highest value and Shante exhibits the lowest value. As a result, Awash and Dera are considered as salt tolerant up to 180mM.