Investigation of the effects of salt stress on some physiological and biochemical characteristics of different landraces of fenugreek (Trigonella foenum - graecum L.)

Fenugreek is one of the important medicinal plant that used in the pharmaceutical industry. In order to investigate the effects of salinity stress on relative water content, membrane stability, total chlorophyll, sodium, potassium, sodium to potassium ratio and proline, a factorial experiment was conducted in a completely randomized design with three replications in 2013. Experimental treatments were combination of eight fenugreek landraces (Isfahan, Tabriz, Hamedan, Sari, Challous, Amol, Mashhad and Yasooj) and four salinity levels (60, 120 and 180 mM NaCl and tap water as a control). Comparison of treatment means revealed significant differences among different salinity levels on relative humidity, membrane stability, chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, total chlorophyll, sodium, and potassium and proline amount. Different levels of salinity led to significant reductions in all of measured in except of proline, sodium and sodium to potassium. The maximum amount of physiological and biochemical characteristics belonged to control (0 mM). The maximum of sodium, sodium to potassium and proline were observed in the salinity level of 180 mM compared to control. Between landraces, Challous, Mashhad, and Isfahan showed the highest amount in most of the studied characteristics in comparison with others. According to the results, these three landraces can be considered as the landraces which contains genes of salt tolerance that could be used to improve genotypes with high potential yield in salin condation.