The effects of sodium chloride on ornamental shrubs

By C. Cassaniti, C. Leonardi, T. Flowers. 2009

146 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The use of saline waters is an option for the irrigation of salt tolerant ornamentals as competition for high quality water increases. However, despite the importance of ornamental shrubs in Mediterranean areas, salt tolerance of such species has received little attention. The aims of our investigation were to quantify the growth response and any injury symptom of 12 widely cultivated ornamental shrubs to irrigation with saline water and to investigate any possible relation with the concentration of Na(+) and Cl(-) in the plants. Species were irrigated with different salinities (10, 40, and 70 mM NaCl) for a 120-day period. At the end of salt treatment, plants were sampled and dry biomass recorded; the relative growth rate (RGR) was also calculated. Root and leaf samples from each species were used to evaluate Na(+), K(+) and Cl(-) concentrations. Growth rates were significantly reduced in Cotoneaster lacteus, Grevillea juniperina and Pyracantha 'Harlequin'. which also showed the highest percentage of necrotic leaves. The increasing external NaCl lead to an increase of Na(+) and Cl(-) in roots and leaves of the different species, although less Na(+) was accumulated than Cl(-): growth reduction well correlated with the concentration of Cl(-) and/or Na(+) in the leaves. The most sensitive species (i.e. C lacteus, G. juniperina and Pyracantha 'Harlequin') had high concentrations of Na(+) and/or Cl(-) in their leaves and also showed a decrease in their leaf K(+)/Na(+) ratios. Even though other species (i.e. Bougainvillea glabra, Ceanothus thyrsiflorus, Leptospermum scoparium, Leucophyllum frutescens and Ruttya fruticosa) demonstrated a high ion concentration in their leaves, they could be considered relatively salt tolerant as there was little growth reduction and few symptoms of injury in the leaves. In some other cases (i.e. Cestrum fasciculatum, Escallonia rubra and Viburnum lucidum) the observed tolerance was related to higher ion concentration in the roots compared to the leaves, probably indicative of a limited transport to the shoots. Only in Eugenia myrtifolia was the absence of symptoms associated with a limited Na(+) and Cl(-) uptake from the rhizosphere. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Subfields: Nature and Landscape Conservation, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/976290a26fd3b144409c6e6d3921bc3a885c606e

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Plant Science

Citations in the corpus

Osmotic and saline effect on growth, water relations, and ion uptake and translocation in Phlomis purpurea plants (2012, background): “313 An increase in external NaCl concentrations induces an increase of Na+ and Cl- 314 in roots and leaves of different ornamental species (Cassaniti et al., 2009).”
Plant Responses to Salt Stress: Adaptive Mechanisms (2017, background): “To observe the effects of salinity on plant morphology, many authors have studied different growth indexes such as relative growth rate (RGR), net assimilation rate (NAR), leaf area ratio (LAR), specific leaf area (SLA) and leaf weight ratio (LWR), according to Beadle [100], as follows: RGR = (ln W2”