effect of salinity stress on growth characteristics and concentrations of nutrition elements in almond ‘shahrood 12’, ‘touno’ cultivars and ‘1-16’ genotype budded on gf677 rootstock

the types of scion-rootstock compound and level of salinity affect on growth characteristics and concentration of nutrition elements of almond leaves and roots. in order to evaluate the effect of salinity stress on vegetative traits and concentration of nutrition elements of leaves and roots almond genotypes, a experiment was carried out with two factors; cultivar in four levels including ‘shahrood 12’, ‘touno’, ‘1-16’ budded on gf677 rootstock and gf677 and water salinity in five levels including zero, 1.2, 2.4, 3.6 and 4.8 g/l of sodium chloride salt (with the electrical conductivity of 0.5, 2.5, 4.9, 7.3 and 9.8 ds/m, respectively). the result showed that with increasing salinity concentration, branch height, branch diameter, and number of produced leaves and percentage of green leaves have been reduced but percentage of necrotic leaves and percentage of downfall leave were increased. the result showed that in the total genotypes studied, the highest rate of na+ (2.12%), cl- (4.94%), ratio na+/k+ (2.03%), ratio na+/ca++ (1.92%),  ratio na+/mg++ (6.81%),  ratio na+/p (14.07%), and the lowest rate of ca++ (1.06%), mg++ (0.33%), p (0.146%), zn++ (32.7 ppm), cu++ (9.33 ppm), in leaves was observed in treatment 9.8 ds/m of nacl. the result showed that type of scion was affected in obstruction of na+ absorption by the roots and their transported to leaves. in the total level of salinity studied, ‘shahrood 12’ was the lowest rate of na+, cl-, ratio na+/k+, ratio na+/ca++, ratio na+/mg++, ratio na+/p and the highest ratio cl-/ na+. also, this cultivar can tolerate high level of salinity (7.3 ds/m), by increasing content of k+ (1.65%),cu++ (9.62 ppm), fe++ (22.30 ppm), zn++ (50.45 ppm) more than other genotypes studied in this research, to deal with the devastating effects of na+. overall, ‘shahrood 12’ was recognized as the most tolerant cultivar to salinity stress.