Investigation the effect of different Salinity levels on Yield and Yield components of Quinoa (Cv. Titicaca)

Since the agriculture field is the main water consumer, using the approaches to increase water use efficiency is necessary. Due to the limited freshwater, farmers have to use exotic water, such as seawater. One of the management methods is the mixture use of freshwater and seawater. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of different salinity levels on yield and yield components of Quinoa (Cv. Titicaca) in greenhouse condition.
In this study, the effect of five mixing use of seawater and freshwater evaluated on yield and yield components of Quinoa (CV. Titicaca). The research was done based on completely randomized design including 3 replications as pot planting in Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources during 2016. Research Station is located in north of Iran at 36° 51' N latitude and 54° 16' E longitude at the south-east corner of Caspian Sea and its height from sea level is 13.3 meters. Soil texture is silty clay. In this study, five irrigation regimes included (0, 15, 30, 45 and 60 percent mixture of sea and tap water). The seeds of Quinoa were planted at a depth of 2.5 centimeter in soil of each pot and were irrigated with tap water. Plants harvested after 6 months, shoot and root dry weight, plant height, yield and thousand kernel weights were measured. Physical and chemical properties of irrigation water and of soil were determined before experiment. The obtained data analyzed using statistical software of SAS (Ver. 9.0) and the means were compared using LSD test at 5 % percent levels.
The results showed that effect of different salinity levels on shoot dry weight, plant height, yield and thousand kernel weights was significant at 1 percent level (P The results indicated that increasing of salinity levels from 0 to 15 percent mixture of sea and tap water resulted in redaction of shoot and root dry weight, yield and thousand kernel weights to 9.8, 9.9, 2.2 and 23.4 percent, respectively. The results showed that this kind of saline and fresh water mixture, in any way, has a high efficiency in reducing salt stress on plant.