Evaluation of salinity tolerance in fourteen selected pistachio (Pistacia vera L.) cultivars

Abstract

Cultivars and rootstocks tolerant to salinity are determinant to
increase the salt tolerance of planted fruit trees including pistachio. In this research, the effect of salinity stress on morphological and physiological traits as well as the concentration of nutrition elements in some pistachio cultivars was investigated based on completely randomized design (CRD), with two factors cultivars and irrigation water salinity. Studied cultivars were Ghazvini, Shahpasand, Akbari, Khanjari, Jandaghi, Italiyayi, Fndoghi 48, Sabz Pesteh Tohg, Ahmad Aghaee, Rezaie Zood Res, Mousa Abadi, Ebrahimi, Kaleh Ghochi and Badami Zarand and levels of salinity were 0.5, 4.9, 9.8, 14.75 and 19.8 dS/m. Each treatment had nine replicas. The results showed that increasing salinity reduced branch height, branch diameter, number of total leaves, and percentage of green leaves, relative humidity content, chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b and total chlorophylls in all cultivars. But percentage of necrotic leaves, percentage of downfall leaves, relative ionic percentage and cell membrane injury percentage were increased. The results showed that salinity stress affected the young trees through increasing the amount of minimum fluorescence (F0) and
decreasing the maximum fluorescence (FM) and reducing variable fluorescence (FV) as well as the ratio of variable fluorescence to maximum fluorescence from 0.83±1 in the control plants to 0.59±0.015 in Rezaie Zood Res cultivar and 0.61±0.009 in Mousa Abadi cultivar. The results also showed that in the total cultivars studied, the highest amount of Na+ in leaves and roots (2.09±0.04% and 3.04±0.06%), and the lowest amount of K+ in leaves and roots (0.40±0.02% and 0.34±0.01%), were observed in treatment 19.75 dS/m. Overall, Ghazvini was found to be the most tolerant cultivar to salinity stress. This cultivar could well tolerate salinity 14.75 dS/m.