Study on the effect of mycorrhizal inoculation and seed priming on Root and Aerial part Characteristics of Lentil

Background and purpose: According to FAO's report, lentil yield in iran is much lower than average yield in the world. This is due to low quality seedling production, low germination and emergence capacity, biotic and abiotic stresses and poor seedling establishment which was forced to looking for a way to enhance these components. Seed priming is one of the strategy for increasing the rate and percentage of the germination, increasing in quality of the prodeuctivity seedling and plant suitable establishment. So this method can cause the fast growth of plants, the increase of rate and percentage of germination, the quality and quantity of yield and the absorption of nutrients as well as early flowering and plant resistance to drought through roots under variable environmental conditions. therefore, in order to study the effects of mycorrhizal inoculation and seed priming with application of the some plant growth regulators on the roots and the features of aerial parts of lentil, the present experiment was conducted.
Material and methods: In order to study response of lentil to seed priming (non-primed seeds, hydro-priming, 100 ppm GA3, 100 ppm salicylic acid and 100 ppm GA3 + 100 ppm salicylic acid) and soil mycorrhizal inoculation (non-inoculation as control, Glomus mosseae and G. intraradices), a factorial experiment based on a completely randomized design was conducted in the farm research and green house of Gonbad Kavous University in four replications during 2013-2014. Measured traits included rate and percentage of emergence, seed vigor, root length, root area, root volume, the number of secondary roots, the number of nitrogen-fixing nodules, the percentage of active nodes, fresh and dry weight of nitrogen fixation nodules, shoot length, the number of primary branches, leaf area, shoot dry weight and leaf dry weight which were measured.
Results:
The results showed that different treatments of mycorrhizal inoculation, priming and their interaction had a significant effect on some of the studied traits. Various priming treatments along with mycorrhizal fungi had more increase and significant effect on the most measured traits in comparison with without application of studied fungi. Mycorrhizal inoculation using G. mosseae fungal + 100 ppm of salicylic acid significantly increased root volume) 12.10 mm3), fresh (0.178 mg) and dry weight of nitrogen fixation nodules (9.58 mg), while traits of leaf area (96.42 cm2), leaf dry weight (29.97 mg/seedling) and root length (15.27 cm) significantly was increased by the mixed treatments of G. intradices and salicylic acid. In this study, the highest nitrogen fixing nodules, shoot length, seed vigor and the number of secondary roots were obtained using a mixed treatment of G. intraradices + 100 ppm gibberellic acid which had a significant difference with other treatments and control. The treatment of hydro priming + G. mosseae increased root volume and seed yield over control and separate treatments when were applied.
Conclusions: The present findings showed that combined effects of priming treatments + mycorrhizal inoculation treatments had more positive effects on the measured traits over control and other treatments.