Mitigation of Salt Stress by Foliar Application of Jasmonic Acid in Wheat

Abstract

 Two individual experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of salinity from germination to seedling stage and exogenous application of methyl jasmonate (MeJA) to mitigate the adverse effects of salinity in wheat. The results of laboratory experiment showed that salt stress reduced germination percent and seedling fresh weight of wheat. The BARI Gom 25 exhibited better performance under saline environment upto 12 dSm-1. The field experimental results showed that plant height, leaf number, tiller number, fresh and dry weight per plant, spike length, grain number and weight per spike and yield of wheat were reduced with increased levels of salinity generally at 8 dS m-1. Exogenous application of MeJA significantly mitigated the adverse effects of salinity by improving morpho-physiological, yield contributing and yield characters of wheat. The interaction between different levels of salinity and MeJA improved the morpho-physiological, yield contributing characters and yield of wheat. The yield of wheat increased with 10 µM MeJA from 2.22 to 2.77 t ha-1, 1.63 to 2.01 t ha-1, 1.15 to 1.39 t ha-1 at 0 dS m-1, 4 dS m-1, 8 dS m-1 salinity, respectively and suggested that MeJA mitigate the adverse effects of salt stress in wheat.