International Journal of Agriculture: Research and Review. Vol., 2 (S), 1097-1105, 2012 Available online at http://www.ecisi.com ISSN 2228-7973 ©2012 ECISI Journals EFFECT OF PRIMING BY SALICYLIC ACID ON GERMINATION AND SEEDLING GROWTH OF SAFFLOWER SEEDS UNDER CACL 2 STRESS BAHAREH JAMSHIDI JAM 1 ,FARID SHEKARI 2* ,MOHAMMAD REZA AZIMI 3 AND ESMAEIL ZANGANI 4 1- Dept. of Agronomy and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran. 2- Dept. of Agronomy and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran. 3- Dept. of Agronomy and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zanjan, Zanjan, 4- Dept. of Agronomy and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran. *Corresponding Author Email: shekari@znu.ac.ir , faridshekari@yahoo.com ABSTRACT: Excess calcium in calcareous soils leads to some problems in germination and subsequent growth of plants. The effects of priming by salicylic acid (SA) on safflower seeds, cv. Goldasht, were examined under various levels of CaCl 2 . Factors were seven levels of SA (including untreated seed as control, 0, 500, 1000, 1500, 2000 and 2500 μM) and CaCl 2 in five levels (0, 80, 160 ,320 and 400 mM). Calcium stress reduced the percentage and rate of germination, fresh and dry weight of cotyledons, cotyledonary leaf area, shoot and root dry weight, root and shoot length, shoot to root ratio and specific leaf weight, but increased mean time germination. Application of SA led to improve measured traits, both in control and stress conditions. Seed priming with 2000 μM SA in the highest level of CaCl 2 led to increase in shoot dry weight near to 90% compared to non-treated seeds. Root dry weight showed greater decrease with increasing stress levels than shoot dry weight. The highest cotyledonary leaf area was found in non-stress condition and in primed seeds with 2000 μM SA. It seems that seed priming with 500 μM SA had most effects on measured traits both in stress and non stress conditions. Results showed that both seed priming with SA or distilled water (0 μM SA) improve safflower seedlings resistance to calcium stress. Key words: germination rate, shoot and root dry weight, specific leaf weight. INTRODUCTION Among the oilseed crops, only safflower (Carthamus tinctorius) originated from Iran (Alyari et al., 2000) and had some favorite traits such as resistance to salt and drought stress, relatively high resistance to cold stress and suitable oil with valuable unsaturated fatty acids (AlYari et al., 2000; Sato et al., 2005). Environment stress reduces crop production more than other factors in the worldwide (Levitt, 1980). Soil and water salinity is one of the limiting factors in plant growth (Tanji, 1990). The dominant cations in the most saline soils are Na + , Ca 2+ , SO 4 2 + , Mg 2 + and K + . The important soluble salts in this soils that restricts growth and reduce plant productivity are NaCl 2 and CaCl 2 (Levitt, 1980). Plant growth and crop production in calcareous soils and the soils with high pH always had some problems. An important part of these problems are caused that in these soils due to high pH and concentration of calcium, some nutrients such as phosphors and micro elements, which their absorption depend to pH, fixed and could not be absorbed by plants. (Deluca et al., 1989). Although the Ca salts present in soil had lower solubility, the activity of the Ca 2+ in the soil is much higher than other ions responsible for ionic stress. The response of plant to calcium stress is not usually due to the primary Ca stress, but to the secondary stresses induced by the Ca, pH, mineral deficiency, etc. For instance, lime induces chlorosis in calcifuges plants due to an iron deficiency. Calcareous soils have high quantities of bicarbonate as well as calcium. In early growth stages, and even higher amounts of calcium is needed for plants, if Ca accompanying with bicarbonate, plants injured by this ions (Levitt, 1980). They can usually be precipitated in the cell sap, commonly as oxalates or carbonates, or neutralized in the soluble from in the cell sap as malates or