Phosphorus fertilization improves soybean growth under salt stress
Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: Soybean is one the most important crop in the world. This crop has expanded its cultivated area for regions with saline soils in several parts of the world. This fact occurs because of the large increase of the soybean productivity in recent decades, in parallel with an increasing demand for food. This work aimed to evaluate the salinity effects on the plant growth, and the interaction of phosphorus fertilization versus irrigation water salinity in soybean plants. The experiment was conducted in a greenhouse using recipients contained 6.0 dm3 of mixture sand and commercial substrate (1:1 v/v). Five salinity levels in the irrigation water (0.8, 2.2, 3.6, 5.0 and 6.4 dS m-1) and two levels of phosphorus fertilization (0 and 300 mg L-1) were evaluated. After 36 days, the salt stress promoted reductions in the most of the growth variables, such as stem diameter, plant height, number and average length of branches, root length, shoot and root dry mass, and absolute growth rate. On the other hand, it increased the chlorophyll relative index, chlorophyll a and total content, and shoot/root dry mass ratio. The phosphorus-supplemented plants had higher stem diameter, number of branches, shoot dry mass and absolute growth rate. The salt stress-phosphorus interaction showed that the phosphorus attenuated the salt stress deleterious effects only on leaf area after 5 dS m-1 of saline water. Soybean plants can be irrigated using water with electrical conductivity up to 1.9 dS m-1 without disturbing its biomass components. The phosphorus fertilization improves the growth soybean subjected to salt stress but not reduce the salinity deleterious effects.
Language: English
Subfield: Plant Science
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2397539194