Kenan Sönmez

Investigation of changes on some morphological characteristics in different eggplant scion/rootstock combinations under salt and drought stresses.

In this study, eggplants grown with both grafted, salt tolerant rootstocks and non-grafted roots from four different eggplant genotypes, under salt stress and drought inducing conditions, were investigated during their pre-flowering stages. For the plant materials, four eggplant scion (salt tolerant: Mardin Kızıltepe and Burdur Merkez; salt sensitive: Artvin Hopa and Kemer) and two rootstock (KöksalF 1 , Vista-306) varieties were used. The plants in 12 different grafting combinations had salt and drought conditions applied to each of them. The drought stress (irrigated when 50% of available moisture was depleted) and the salt stress (6 dSm) were applied individually. At the end of the applied stress conditions, the plant samples were evaluated according to fresh weight and dry weight of their green parts and roots, leaf area, stem diameter, shoot and root heights. In this study, the highest fresh weight and dry weight were determinated in Köksal F1/Kemer (284.42 and 50.59 g plant). Moreover, the least changes in root dry weight was observed in Köksal-F1/Burdur Merkez (11.40% ) under drought and Köksal-F1/Artvin Hopa (5.71 %) under salinity. These results indicated that grafted plants were more resistant to stress conditions than non-grafted plants. Overall, it was determined that Köksal-F 1 rootstock had a more effective tolerance to salt and drought stress conditions than the Vista rootstock variety.