Assessment of Salinity Effects on Some Morphological and Physiological Traits and In Vitro Culture of Halophyte Plant (Salicornia Europaea)

Salicornia europaea is a halophytic annual plant of the Chenopodiaceae family, which is considered as an oil plant in marine irrigation. This experiment was conducted to determine the effect of salinity and to reach the best hormonal treatment for shoot regeneration. After washing and sterilization, seeds of S. europaea were cultured under controlled light and temperature conditions at five salinity levels consisting of 0, 100, 200, 400 and 600 mM of NaCl in plots including sterilized soil and vermicompost for 30 days. Germination percentage, germination rate, plant height, the fresh and dry weight of the plant, and relative water content were then recorded. For in vitro culture, the shoot-tips were excided and cultivated in Murashige and Skoog medium containing combinations of various plant growth regulators (BA and NAA including 0 and 100 mM salinity levels) under laboratory conditions, and then plant regeneration was investigated. These experiments were performed in a completely randomized design (CRD) with three replicates. The results showed that high salinity exerted a low effect on seedlings of the Salicornia and the rest of traits indicated high levels of salinity tolerance and showed plant high ability to adapt to salinity. In tissue culture experiment, the results of shoot induction indicated that the hormonal treatments in combination with 100 mM of NaCl provided the better regeneration than that of non-salinity conditions. Increasing use of  the hormone were not given the better regeneration results, but it was needed to use a good proportion of hormone level for shoot regeneration. In the present research, the best possible ratio was the combination of 0.5 mg/l-1 NAA + 0.5 mg/l BA + 0.5 + 100mM NaCl, which resulted in 66.67 regeneration percentage.