The Role of Priming Seeds With Salicylic Acid in Improving Some Vegetative Growth Characteristics of Sweet Corn Under Water Stress Conditions

Abstract

A field experiment was carried out with the aim of studying the role of seed priming with salicylic acid in some vegetative growth characteristics of sweet corn (Zea mays L. var. Saccharata) under water stress conditions for the two autumn seasons 2018 and 2019. Use of a Randomized Complete Block Design (R.C.B.D.) according to the spiltplot arrangement with three replications. The main-plots included three levels of water stress, which are irrigation after depleting 30, 50 and 70% of the available water, with symbols W 1 , W 2 and W 3 respectively. The seed priming concentrations with salicylic acid represented 50, 100, and 150 mg L -1 , symbolized as SA 1 , SA 2 , and SA 3 , respectively, as well as the two comparison treatments for dry seeds and soaking in distilled water, symbolized by CO 0 and CO 1 , respectively, by the Sub-plots. The seeds were soaked for 24 hours, and then dried to their original moisture. The results showed that there were no significant differences between the two irrigation treatments after depleting 30 and 50% of the available water, with regard to the number of days to 50% tasseling, plant height, number of leaves, leaf area, dry weight of the plant, the rate of crop growth for both seasons. Whereas, irrigation after depleting 70% of the available water led to a decrease in all the studied characteristics. While the seed priming treatments with salicylic acid (SA) had a significant effect on most of the studied traits, except for the number of days to 50% tasseling, as the treatment of SA 1 at a concentration of 50 mg L -1 was significantly superior to the highest average plant height of 149.20 and 154.76 cm. The number of leaves is 13.05 and 13.42 leaf plant -1 , the leaf area is 3886.33 and 4017.33 cm 2 plant -1 , the dry weight of the plant is 156.20 and 159.43 g plant -1 and the crop growth rate is 3.12 and 2.98 g m 2 day -1 compared to the comparison treatment (dry seeds) respectively, For the two seasons. The interaction of water stress and salicylic acid also significantly affected the characteristic of plant height, leaf area and plant dry weight for both seasons. Therefore, we recommend the possibility of irrigation after depleting 50% of the available water without a significant effect on the characteristics of vegetative growth, as well as the possibility of priming sweet corn seeds with salicylic acid at a concentration of 50 mg L -1 soak to improve their ability to withstand water stress conditions.

The Effect of Nano and Metallic Boron Spray on some Growth Traits of Sweet Corn under Water Stress Conditions

“…This enabled light into the plant canopy, which led to a drop in plant height because the plant growth hormone auxin was destroyed by photodissociation before it could effect on stem elongation. These findings are in agreement with those of [23] and [21], which demonstrated that water stress reduces the average plant height of maize. Due to a decrease in plant height ( the W3 depletion treatment, the total number of leaves and leaf area were reduced in plants subjected to water stress.…”

“…This, in turn, negatively affected dry matter accumulation (Table 6) and its reduction, and hence the decrease in crop growth rate (Table 7). These results are consistent with those of [30,31,20,28,21,32,33) , who found that water stress causes a reduction in dry weight and hence a decrease in the growth rate of corn plants.…”