DRY MATTER PRODUCTION AND K/NA IN Thinopyrum ponticum GROWING IN HALOMORPHIC CONDITIONS IN HYDROPONIC SYSTEM

ACUÑA, M.L.; GRUNBERG K; ANDRÉS, A.

Buenos Aires

Simposio; 5th International Symposium of Forage Breeding; 2015

Argentina is the third country after the US and Russia with large area of soils with excess ofsalts. Soils with salts (halomorphic soils) can be classified by USDA as saline soil, saline-sodicsoil and sodic soil. The livestock system was shifted to these kinds of soils by the agriculturalactivity increase. Thinopyrum ponticum is one of the forage species used in halomorphic soils.There are few works that address the topic about how is the production of this specie inhalomorphic soils even less about how is the k/Na relationship. The aim of this job was assessgenotypes of wheatgrass growing in 4 different substrates: control (pH = 6. 5-7. 5; CE < 4dS/m),sodic (pH > 8.5; CE < 4dS/m), saline (pH < 8.5; CE > 4dS/m) and saline-sodic (pH > 8.5; CE >4dS/m). For that, 35 genotypes were cloned in 12 propagules and they were put in pots of 4l inhydroponic system with sand: perlite, irrigated with Hoagland solution and different combinationsof salt (NaCl, HCO3Na, H2CO3Na2) to emulate the 4 substrates i.e. saline soil, saline-sodic soil,sodic soil, and without salt for the control soil. The traits evaluated were dry matter per plant (g)and K/Na relationship, the design was split plot with 3 repetitions, the main plot was thesubstrate and the sub-plot was the genotype. The results show that in the control substrate wasthe higher production of dry matter (9.63g) and K/Na (1.62) and in the saline-sodic soil was thelower production of dry matter (1.47g), and K/Na (0.27), there were significant differencesbetween all the substrates for both traits. The extreme conditions for Thynopirum ponticumgrowing in salt conditions was saline-sodic substrate, for dry matter and K/Na.