The effect of halopriming on seed germination of (Salvia aegyptiaca) under condition of salinity stress

Salinity stress is one of the most important factors limiting plant growth, which has a negative effect on seed germination, poor product quality and plant yield. Halopriming, soaking seeds in salt solution and a treatment before cultivation and as one of the priming methods, increases the germination and uniform greening of seeds under adverse environmental conditions. To study the effect of different levels of halopriming on the germination characteristics of the medicinal plant salvia aegyptiaca under salt stress, a factorial experiment in a Completely Randomized Design with three replications was performed in the seed technology laboratory of the faculty of Natural Resources of Tarbiat Modares University in 2021. In this experiment, the first factor includes different levels of halopriming with four levels (0, 80, 150 and 250 mM) of NaCl solution and the second factor includes different levels of salinity (0, 50, 100, 200 and 300 mM NaCl) was investigated and different traits including germination percentage, germination rate, average time of germination, root length, shoot length and seed germination index were evaluated. Results showed that seed priming positively affected on all germination characteristics in such a way that it created a significant difference in all growth characteristics. The highest seed germination percentage (91.33) was obtained in 80 mM priming treatment and no stress conditions. In this study, the increase in salinity stress caused a significant decrease in the percentage of seed germination, and in the conditions of salinity stress, seed halopriming effectively reduced the effects of salinity stress