Abdel-Haleem A. H. El-Shaieny
Abiotic stress such as salinity of soil or water is a general problem and of special concern in countries with low rainfall and hot temperatures such as Egypt. The main objective of these experiments is to study some physiological and morphological characters of five cowpea genotypes viz. Sudany, Chinese red, Kaha 1, TVU 21 and Black eye Crowder. As influenced by salinity levels viz. Normal water 153 as control, 2500, 3500 and 4800 ppm. Germination percentage over control decreased insignificantly with increasing salinity levels. On contrary, salinity significantly reduced shoot length, root length, seedling fresh weight and seedling dry weight, relative water content, ion leakage and chlorophyll content. There were genotypic differences among the test genotypes in response to salt stress exposure. The results indicated that salinity levels had a significant effect on all of studied traits. On the other hand, the differences among genotypes were significant with all traits except, germination percentage. While, the interaction between genotypes and water salinity levels were significant with root length, seedling fresh weight, seedling dry weight, relative water content, ion leakage and chlorophyll content. While, germination percentage and shoot length, exhibited insignificant effect. All studied traits for cowpea seedlings decreased with increasing water salinity. In general, Black eye Crowder has more tolerance to water salinity than other studied genotypes.
