engleski

Vegetative growth and salt accumulation of six olive cultivars under salt stress

The olive is one of the most cultivated fruit trees in Croatia, particularly in its Mediterranean part – Dalmatia. The average yield of less than 10 kg/tree is considered very low and is mostly attributed to summer drought. The coast and especially the islands are scarce with quality water sources. On the other hand underground, somewhat saline water is frequently available, which however, has not been used for irrigation so far. The olive is considered moderately tolerant to salinity, although more tolerant than some other fruit trees. Therefore the aim of this project was to test the most widespread autochthonous olive cultivars to different levels of salinity. Five self rooted Croatian autochthonous olive cultivars (Buža, Drobnica, Istarska bjelica, Lastovka and Oblica) and a Italian cultivar (Leccino) were grown in 1:1 quartz sand : perlite substrate in a greenhouse. The plants were irrigated twice a day with 1/4 Hoagland solution and subjected to 0, 33, 66 and 100 mM NaCl during seventy days. The effect of salinity started to appear at some cultivars already 10 days after the application. During the following 50 days of salinity exposure, all the cultivars showed reduced shoot extension at high saline conditions, the most at 100 mM NaCl level. At the end of the experiment the shoot growth was decreased mostly at Buža, Leccino, and Lastovka, at which the new shoot lengths at 100 mM were 21, 36 and 37% of the growth obtained at control plants, respectively. At the same treatment, cultivar Oblica performed significantly better, obtaining 54 % of the control plants growth. Equally, Oblica showed the lowest level of sodium accumulated in the leaves. Most of the cultivars differed significantly in terms of the number of nodes and leaves only at the highest NaCl treatment.

salinity; shoot; sodium; Olea europea

nije evidentirano