Amelioration of salt stress in sunflower through nutrient management in coastal area of Bangladesh

Soil salinity is a severe environmental stress that interrupts normal physiological and biochemical processes in plants towards significant yield losses in almost all field crops including sunflower. Soil salinity is increasing over time globally including Bangladesh due to climate change, excessive use of agrochemicals and tidal flooding. Hence, maintenance of coastal soil health, fertility and productivity are crucial that could be minimized through judicious nutrient management. Sunflower is a prospective and popular oil crop that has the potential to compensate yield gap for promoting domestic production of edible oil in Bangladesh. Salt tolerant sunflower cultivars or genotype identification or salt tolerant variety development or improving tolerance against salt stress are promising option for enhancing growth and yield of sunflower in coastal saline soil of Bangladesh.

Nutrient management involves using crop nutrients as efficiently as possible to improve productivity with maintaining environmental sustainability. Different nutrient combination through chemical and biofertilizer along with standard fertilizer dose will be helpful for minimizing impact of salt stress on growth and yield of sunflower. A series of pot and field experiments with different nutrient combination among silicon, salicylic acid, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and rhizobacteria along with standard fertilizer dose will be assessed to evaluate the potential ameliorative role of these nutrients on growth, physiological response and yield of sunflower under salt stress. Incorporation of better nutrient combination (Si, salicylic acid, AMF and rhizobacteria) along with recommended dose of fertilizer holds promise for enhancing growth, yield and salt tolerance index of sunflower under salt stress. Therefore, judicious nutrient management practices will show potential ameliorative function for alleviating salt stress in sunflower.

• Research Project