Abstract Full Text:PDF Recommended articles Mail to Author How to Cite

¹ Batı Akdeniz Agricultural Research Instiute, 07100, Antalya, Türkiye
² Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University Agricultural Faculty Horticulture Department, 53100, Rize, Türkiye
³ Ankara University Agricultural Faculty Horticulture Department 06110, Ankara, Türkiye
⁴ Doqutech Academy Ankara University Teknopolis, Ankara, Türkiye DOI : 10.16882/HortiS.1479101 Viewed : 195 - Downloaded : 149 Salinity, which is one of the major abiotic stresses, prevails in mostly arid and semiarid areas that is nearly 20% of the world`s cultivated area. Excessive amounts of salt around the plant root zone are detrimental to vegetative growth and economic yield. Today salinization is still severely expanding and posing a great threat to the development of sustainable agriculture. Although eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) is considered moderately sensitive, soil salinity mitigates strictly the growth and yield. Eggplant has significant crop wild relatives (CWRs) which are thought to be more tolerant to abiotic stresses and it is substantial to exploit their potential against salinity in hybrid breeding studies. It has previously been proven that Solanum incanum L. has tolerance to salinity stress. This study aimed to improve salinity-tolerant pure eggplant lines. Therefore, the acquired F₂ population from interspecific hybridization between the pure line (BATEM-TDC47) with distinctive features from BATEM eggplant gene pool and S. incanum L., were subjected to salinity stress at 150 mM NaCl level with its parents and F₁ plants. On the 12^th day after the last salt treatment, the plants were evaluated using a 0-5 visual scale. Among the 256 stressed plants, 50 F₂ individuals were determined to be salt tolerant. Additionally, some of their morphological and physiological features, such as shoot length, stem diameter, number of leaves, anthocyanin presence, prickliness, malondialdehyde (MDA), and proline levels, were studied and compared to the controls of their parent and F₁ plants. Results showed that shoot length and stem diameter decreased dramatically under salt stress. According to the analysis, the average MDA and proline levels of the F₂ population were identified as 10.9 μ mol g-1 FW and 8.4 μ mol g-1 FW, respectively. The distinguished 50 F₂ plants that showed salinity tolerance were transferred to the greenhouse and self-pollinated to produce the F₃ generation. Keywords : Abiotic stress Biochemical parameters Morphological features NaCl Segregating population