Tolerance to salinity

The quality and productivity of chilli crops are reduced in saline soils. However, not all chilli varieties are equally affected by salinity. The bullet variety of chilli, it appears, is better at tolerating saline soils.

But what about its seeds? How much salinity can the seeds tolerate?

To investigate, Sanjoy Sadhukhan and Anup Kumar Sarkar from Raiganj University, collaborated with researchers  in Dukhulal Nibaran Chandra College, Murshidabad and the Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan.

They cleaned bullet chilli seeds to remove microbes and impurities and placed them in petri dishes with different concentrations of sodium chloride solution. For 12 days, they observed how the seeds germinated.

The researchers analysed how the different sodium chloride concentrations influenced germination indices such as root and shoot length as well as the fresh weight of the roots and shoots of the seedlings. They found that, during germination and in the early stages of seedling growth, the bullet variety of chilli showed resistance to a high concentration of sodium chloride, even up to 200 millimolar.

Farmers in salt affected areas can now opt for the bullet variety of chilli for cultivation.

Meanwhile, researchers need to explore the molecular mechanisms underlying the salt tolerance of the Bullet variety of chilli and check whether the trait can be transferred to other varieties as well.

DOI: 10.1007/s40415-023-00894-9;
Brazilian Journal of Botany, June (2023)

Reported by Samikhya Bhuyan
Rajiv Gandhi University, Rono Hills, Doimukh

Tagged as: Anup Kumar Sarkar, Raiganj University, Sanjoy Sadhukhan, Visva-Bharati

Categorised in: Agriculture, Science, West Bengal