Effect of salt treatments on seedlings of five commercial artichoke hybrids

© 2020 International Society for Horticultural Science. All rights reserved.Abiotic stresses, and especially salinity, represent a grave threat to agriculture dramatically affecting the crop production around the world. Climate changes are projected to have a significant impact on temperature and precipitation profiles increasing the incidence and severity of climate changes-related stresses and reducing crop productivity. Drought and salinity are actually widespread in many regions around the world and are expected to increase rapidly reaching the salinization of more than 50% of the arable lands by the 2050. In particular, for the irrigated crops such as artichoke the problem is related not only to the water availability, but its quality in several zones available water is only salty. Salinity affects not only crop production, but also its quality. Plant adaptation to salinity stresses is based mainly i) on root system architecture since deep root could explore different soil layer which could results in different salt concentration; or ii) on the activation of molecular networks involved in stress perception, signal transduction, and expression of specific stress-related genes and metabolites. Seedlings of five commercial artichoke hybrids, kindly provided by Basf (former Bayer and Nunhems), i.e., 'Nun 04245', 'Sambo', 'Opera', 'Madrigal', and 'Symphony', were grown under three levels of salinity i.e., 0 (control), 0.75, and 1.5 M of NaCl in three replicates. On five plants per each replicate were recorded morphological traits of roots and leaves i.e., number of leaves, leaves length, leaves (and cotyledons) area, fresh weight, dry matter, root length, photosynthesis, and stomata conductibility. The above data were recorded at 1 day, 3 days and 7 days after the addition of salt solutions. ANOVA underlines differences among genotypes and among salt treatment for most of the traits measured.