The effect of water salinity on some growth parameters of four grasses in Sistan region

Today, grass is widely used in landscape. So, it is important to understand the various environmental stresses such as salinity. Thus an investigation was performed as factorial based on completely randomized design with three replications. The studied factors included four type of lawn, namely: Poa pratensis, Cynodon dactylon, Lolium perenne and Festuca rubra with different levels of sodium chloride (0, 0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2 percent equal to 0, 6.25, 12.5, 18.75 and 25 dS/m). The results showed that all plant growth indices (shoot fresh and dry weight. stem height, tiller number and root length and weight) were decreased by increasing salt concentration. In this case, plants had the lowest growth at 2% salinity. Salinity had minimal effect up to 0.5 % and in most cases, there was no significant difference compared with the control plants. But from 1% of salinity and above all indices were affected by salinity stress and were significantly decreased compared with 0%. In most cases, Poa and Lolium growth parameters were not significant and almost had the same growth. In all cases Cynodon had the highest growth parameters. In addition, it significantly differed from three other genera. Furthermore, the findings of this study showed that Cynodon had greater growth parameters rate than the other three lawns in all salinity levels.