Germination Behaviour of a Perennial Amaranthaceae of North Western Algeria (Oran): <i>Arthrocnemum glaucum</i> (Del.) Ung. Respectively Submitted to Thermal Factor and Salt Stress

Abstract

In light of the importance of seeds germinative phase in the progress of later stages of development of any particular plant species in semi-arid and arid area, it is essential to study the germinative behavior and to evaluate the tolerance of a perennial halophyte of Amaranthacaea family, Arthrocnemum glaucum (Del.) Ung. during this crucial phase. A study is devoted to this species seeds germination, which although it's a mandatory halophyte, it's less tolerant to salt stress in germination' phase. Germinative tests are carried out in laboratory, on seeds putted in Petri dishes placed at different temperatures. They enable us to determine the optimal germination temperature, which is 40˚C while the cold one (5˚C) completely inhibits it. The seeds of Arthrocnemum glaucum show an optimum germination of 44% in distilled water (NaCl 0 mm) similar to glycophytes but they differ in their ability to germinate at higher salinities. Beyond 300 mM germination is completely inhibited. Prior to break dormancy seeds, a cold treatment at 5˚C has been achieved; the germination capacity of the seeds increases with the duration of the cold treatment. It increases from 30% after 2 weeks of treatment to 80% after a treatment of 27 weeks.

Seed priming to optimize germination in Arthrocnemum Moq.

“…Another type of previous treatment to promote germination has been based on its exposure to a certain period of cold. [48] found that without a seed priming treatment the germination percentage in Arthrocnemum plants collected from northern Algeria was quite low, ranging from 5 to 30% depending on the germination temperature (30% to 40ºC). To achieve an improvement in germination, they exposed the seeds to a cold pretreatment without salinity regime (5ºC for 2, 10 and 27 weeks) and the germination percentages increased 30%, 40% and 80% respectively.…”

“…In traditional studies on tolerance of seeds to salinity without enforced dormancy pretreatments under these stress conditions, it has been shown that in Arthrocnemum, germination is reduced due to an increase in salinity and, normally, the untreated control produced higher germination percentages [23,27,40,43,44,46,48,49,56]. The first germination test on Arthrocnemum found in the literature was performed by [56] from the "Le cap Croisette" (southern Marseille, France).…”

“…The facility of germination of these species makes them already suitable for use in applied programs. However, the genus Arthrocnemum represent a lineage in which the germination process needs previous treatments to achieve optimal percentages [23,24,[40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49].…”